IV
Even months after getting over the Spanish influenza, Sam Carsten knew he wasn't quite the man he had been. The disease had done its best to steamroller him into the grave. Something like a dozen sailors aboard the USS Remembrance had died. Many more, like him, remained weaker and slower than they were before they got sick.
He could still do his job, though, and do the hundreds of jobs any sailor had to do when he wasn't at his battle station. And, as the Remembrance worked with the aeroplanes she carried, learning what they could and couldn't do, he occasionally found time to marvel.
This was one of those times. He stood by the superstructure as the Remembrance steamed in the North Atlantic, watching while a Wright two-decker approached the stern. A sailor with semaphore paddles directed the aeroplane toward the deck. The pilot had to pay more attention to the director than to his own instincts and urges; if he didn't, he'd end up in the drink.
"Come on," Sam muttered. He'd been watching landings for a while now. Just the same, they made him sweat. If he couldn't take them for granted, what were they like for the fliers? Pilots were the most nonchalant men on the face of the earth, but anyone who was nonchalant through one of these landings would end up dead. "Come on."
On came the aeroplane. Smoke spurted as its wheels slammed the deck of the Remembrance. The hook on the bottom of the Wright machine's fuselage missed the first steel cable stretched across the deck to arrest its progress, but caught on the second one. The two-decker jerked to a halt.
"Jesus." Carsten turned to George Moerlein, who'd watched the landing a few feet away from him. "Every time they do that, I think the aeroplane is going to miss the deck-either that or it'll tear in half when the hook grabs it."
His bunkmate nodded. "I know what you mean. It looks impossible, even though we've been watching 'em for months."
As the Wright's prop slowed from a blur to a stop, the pilot climbed out of the aeroplane. Sailors with mops and buckets dashed over and started swabbing down the deck. With oil and gasoline spilling all the time, swabbing was a more serious business than on most ships.
Sam said, "The thing I really fear is one of 'em coming in low and smashing right into the stern. Hasn't happened yet, thank God."
"Yeah, that wouldn't do anybody any good," Moerlein agreed. "Could happen, too, especially if somebody's coming in with his aeroplane shot to hell and gone-or if he just makes a mistake."
"What I hope is, we never come into range of a battleship's big guns," Carsten said. "Taking a hit is bad enough any which way-I've done that-but taking a hit here, with all the gasoline we're carrying… We'd go straight to the moon, or maybe five miles past it."
"It'd be over in a hurry, anyhow," his bunkmate answered. Before Sam could say he didn't find that reassuring, George Moerlein went on, "But that's one of the reasons we're carrying all these aeroplanes: to keep battlewagons from getting into gunnery range in the first place."
Carsten stamped the flight deck, which was timber lain over steel. "We can't be the only Navy working on aeroplane carriers."
"I've heard tell the Japs are," Moerlein said. "Don't know it for a fact, but I've heard it. It wouldn't surprise me."
"Wouldn't surprise me, either, not even a little bit," Sam said. "I was in the Battle of the Three Navies, out west of the Sandwich Islands. Those little yellow bastards are tougher than anybody ever gave 'em credit for."
Moerlein looked sour. "And they just walked away from the war free and clear, too. The Rebs are paying, England and France are paying, Russia's gone to hell in a handbasket, but Japan said, 'Well, all right, if nobody else on our side's left standing, we're done, too,' and we couldn't do anything but say, 'All right, Charlie-see you again some day.' "
"We will, too," Carsten said. "I was just a kid when they took the Philippines away from Spain right after the turn of the century. And now we've taken the Sandwich Islands away from England-I was there for that, aboard the Dakota. So they're looking our way, and we're looking their way, and nobody's sitting between us any more."
"That'd be a fight, all right. All that ocean, aeroplanes whizzing around, us bombing them and trying to keep them from bombing us." Moerlein got a faraway look in his eye.
So did Sam. "Hell, if both sides have aeroplane carriers, you could fight a battle without ever seeing the other fellow's ships."
"That would be pretty strange," Moerlein said, "but I guess it could happen."
"Sure it could," Sam said. "And you'd want to sink the other bastard's aeroplane carriers just as fast as you could, because if he didn't have any aeroplanes left, he couldn't stop your battleships from doing whatever they wanted to do." He stamped on the flight deck again. "And if the aeroplane carrier is the ship you have to sink first, that makes the Remembrance the most important ship in the whole Navy right now."
For a moment, he felt almost like a prophet in the middle of a vision of the future. He also felt pleased with himself for having had the sense to figure out that aeroplanes were the coming thing, and grateful to Commander Grady for having brought him to the Remembrance, no matter how ugly she was.
Then something else occurred to him. He hurried away. "Where's the fire at?" George Moerlein called after him. He didn't answer, but hurried down a hatch to go below.
He guessed Grady would be checking one sponson or another and, sure enough, found him in the third one into which he poked his head. The officer was testing the elevation screw on the gun there, and talking about it in a low voice with the gunner's mate who commanded the crew for that sponson. Sam stood at attention and waited to be noticed.
Eventually, Commander Grady said, "You'll want to make sure of the threads there, Reynolds. Good thing we're not likely to be sailing into combat any time soon." He turned to Sam. "What can I do for you, Carsten?"
"I've been thinking, sir," Sam began.
A smile spread across Grady's rabbity features. "Far be it from me to discourage such a habit. And what have you been thinking?"
"We've taken the Confederates' battleships away from them, sir, and we've taken away their submersibles," Carsten said. "What do the agreements we've made with them say about aeroplane carriers?"
"So far as I know, they don't say anything," Commander Grady said.
"Shouldn't they, sir?" Sam asked in some alarm. "What if the Rebs built a whole raft of these ships and-"
Grady held up a hand. "I understand what you're saying. If the Remembrance turns out to be as important as we think she is, then you'll be right. If she doesn't, though-" He shrugged. "There are a lot of people in Philadelphia who think we're pouring money down a rathole."
"They're crazy," Sam blurted.
"I think so, too, but how do you go about proving it?" Grady asked. "We need to have something to do to prove what we're worth. In any case, I believe the answer to your question is no, as I said: if the Confederate States want to build aeroplane carriers, they are not forbidden to do so. When the agreements were framed, no one took this class of ship seriously."
"That's too bad," Carsten said.
"I think so, too," Grady repeated. "Nothing I can do about it, though. Nothing you can do about it, either."
Carsten looked southwest, in the direction of the Confederacy. "Wonder how long it'll be before the Rebels have one of these babies." Then he looked east. "Wonder how long it'll be before England and France do, too."
"It'll take the Rebs a while, and the frogs, too, I expect," Commander Grady said. "We're sitting on the CSA, and Kaiser Bill is sitting on France. England… I don't know about England. They didn't have the war brought home to them, not the way the Confederates and the French did. Yeah, they got hungry, and the Royal Navy finally ended up fighting out of its weight, but they weren't whipped-you know what I mean?"
"Yes, sir," Sam said.
Grady went on as if he hadn't spoken: "And from Australia through India and Africa, they're still cocks o' the walk. If they decide they want to get even and they find some friends…" His laugh wa
s anything but mirthful. "Sounds like the way we won this last war, doesn't it, Carsten? We decided we were going to get even, and we cozied up to the German Empire. I hope to God it doesn't work for them ten years down the line, or twenty, or thirty."
"Yes, sir," Sam said again. "I guess we just have to do our best to keep ahead of them, that's all." He sighed. "I wonder where all this ends, or if it ever ends."
"Only way I can see it ending is if we ever figure out how to blow a whole country clean off the map," Grady said. He slapped Sam on the back. "I don't figure that'll happen any time soon, if it ever does. We'll have work to do for as long as we want it, the two of us."
"That'd be good, sir," Carsten said equably. "That's the big reason I wanted to transfer to the Remembrance. As soon as they bombed us off Argentina, I knew aeroplanes were going to stay important for a long, long time."
"You're a sharp bird, Carsten," Grady said. "I was glad to see you get that promotion at the end of ' 16. You're too sharp to have stayed an able seaman for as long as you did. If you were as pushy as you're sharp, you'd be an officer by now."
"An officer? Me?" Carsten started to laugh, but Commander Grady wasn't the first person who'd told him he thought like one. He shrugged. "I like things the way they are pretty well. I've got enough trouble telling myself what to do, let alone giving other people orders."
Grady chuckled. "There's more to being an officer than giving orders, though I don't suppose it looks that way to the ratings on the receiving end. I think you've got what it takes, if you want to apply yourself."
"Really, sir?" Sam asked, and Commander Grady nodded. Sam had never aspired to anything more than chief petty officer, not even in his wildest dreams. Now he did. He'd known a few mustangs, officers who'd come up through the ranks. Doing that wasn't impossible, but it wasn't easy, either. How much did he want it? Did he want it at all? "Have to think about that."
Jake Featherston rubbed brilliantine into his hair, then combed a part that might have been scribed with a ruler. He looked at himself in the tiny mirror above the sink in his room. He wasn't handsome, but he didn't figure he would ever be handsome. He'd do.
He put on a clean shirt and a pair of pants that had been pressed in the not too impossibly distant past. Again, he didn't look as if he were about to speak before the Confederate Congress, but he didn't want to speak before the Confederate Congress, except to tell all the fat cats in there where to go. He grinned. He was going to tell some fat cats where to go today, too, but they weren't so fat as they wanted to be, nor so fat as they thought they were.
He donned a cloth workingman's cap, put his pistol on his belt, and left the room. Fewer people bothered wearing weapons on the streets in Richmond than had been true in the first desperate weeks after the Great War ended, but he was a long way from the only man sporting a pistol or carrying a Tredegar. Nobody could be sure what would happen next, and a good many people didn't care to find out the hard way.
Featherston hurried down Seventh toward the James River. The back room in the saloon where the Freedom Party had met wasn't big enough these days, but a rented hall a couple of doors down still sufficed for their needs. After meetings, the Party veterans would repair to the saloon and drink and talk about the good old days when everyone had always stood shoulder to shoulder with everyone else.
Sometimes Jake was part of those gatherings, sometimes he wasn't. After tonight, either he would be or he wouldn't have anything to do with the Party any more. He saw no middle way- but then, he'd never been a man who looked for the middle way in anything he did.
A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the meeting hall: men in caps and straw hats crowding around the doorway, jostling to get in. They parted like the Red Sea to let Jake by. 'Tell the truth tonight, Featherston!" somebody called. "Tell everybody the whole truth."
"Don't you worry about that," Jake answered. "I don't know how to do anything else. You wait and see."
Several people clapped their hands. But somebody said, "You don't want to be Party chairman. You want to be king, is what you want."
Whirling to turn on the man, Jake snapped, "That's a goddamn lie, Bill Turley, and you know it goddamn well. What I want is for the Freedom Party to go somewhere. If it wants to go my way, fine. If it doesn't, it'll go however it goes and I'll go somewhere else. No hard feelings."
No matter what he'd said a moment before, that was a thumping lie. Hard feelings were what made Jake Featherston what he was. If the Freedom Party rejected him tonight, he would never forget and never forgive. He never forgot and never forgave any slight. And this rejection, if it came, would be far worse than a mere slight.
Inside, people buzzed and pointed as he walked up the aisle toward the long table on the raised stage at the front of the hall. Anthony Dresser already sat up there, along with several other Party officials: Ernie London, the treasurer, who was almost wide enough to need two chairs; Ferdinand Koenig, the secretary, a headbreaker despite his fancy first name; and Bert McWilliams, the vice chairman, a man who could be inconspicuous in almost any company.
Dresser, London, and Mc Williams all wore business suits of varying ages and degrees of shininess. Koenig, like Jake, was in his shirtsleeves. As Jake sat down at the table, he looked out over the audience. It was a shirtsleeves crowd; he saw only a handful of jackets and cravats and vests. He smiled, but only to himself. Dresser and his chums no doubt thought they looked impressive. The crowd out there, though, would think they were stuffed shirts.
"And they are," Jake muttered to himself. "God damn me to hell and gone, but they are."
Anthony Dresser rapped a gavel on the tabletop. "This meeting of the Freedom Party will now come to order," he said, and turned to Ferdinand Koenig. "The secretary will read the minutes of last week's meeting and bring us up to date on correspondence."
"Thank you, Mr. Chairman," Koenig said in a rumbling baritone. Jake Featherston listened with half an ear as he droned through the minutes, which were approved without amendments. "As for correspondence, we've had a good many letters from North and South Carolina and from Georgia concerning joining the Party and forming local chapters, this as a result of Mr. Featherston's speaking tour. We've also had inquiries from Mississippi and Alabama and even one from Texas, these based on newspaper stories about the speaking tour." He displayed a fat sheaf of envelopes.
Dresser gave him a sour look. "Kindly keep yourself to the facts, Mr. Koenig. Save the editorials for the papers." He nodded to Ernie London. "Before we proceed to new business, the treasurer will report on the finances of the Party."
"Thank you, Mr. Chairman." London's voice was surprisingly high and thin to be emerging from such a massive man. "As far as money goes, we are not in the worst situation. Our present balance is $8,541.27, which is an increase of $791.22 over last week. I would like that better if it were in dollars from before 1914: then we would have ourselves a very nice little piece of change. But even now, it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick."
"Question!' Jake Featherston said sharply. "Where did all that new money come from?"
Dresser brought the gavel down sharply. "That doesn't matter now. Only thing that matters is how much money we've got." He banged the gavel again. "And now, if nobody else has got anything to say, we'll get on with the new business. We-"
"Mr. Chairman, I reckon Jake's got himself a point," Ferdinand Koenig said, "especially on account of the new business you've got in mind."
Bang! "No, sir," Dresser said, angry now. "I said it doesn't matter, and my ruling stands, by Jesus."
"Mr. Chairman, I appeal that ruling to a vote from the floor," Jake said. He hated parliamentary procedure, but he'd started learning it anyhow, even if he did think it was only a way to cheat by the numbers.
"Second," Koenig said.
"Never mind," Dresser said in a low, furious voice. He wasn't ready for a floor vote, then. Jake wasn't nearly sure he was ready for a floor vote, either. When one came, he wanted
it to be for all the marbles. Dresser said, "Go ahead, Ernie. Tell 'em what they want to know, so we can get on with things."
Reluctantly, London said, "Some came from dues, some came from contributions from people who heard Featherston's speaking tour."
"How much came from each?" Jake demanded.
Fat as he was, Ernie London looked as if he wished he were invisible. "I don't have the figures showing the split right here with me," he said at last.
"Hell of a treasurer you are," Featherston jeered. "All right, let me ask you an easy one: did I bring in more or less than half the week's take? You tell me you don't recollect, I'll call you a liar to your face. Everybody knows bookkeepers like playing with numbers. They don't forget 'em "
Most unwillingly, London said, "It was more than half."
"Thank you, Ernie." Jake beamed at him, then nodded to Anthony Dresser. "Go on ahead, Tony. It's your show for now." He put a small but unmistakable stress on the last two words.
"All right, then." Dresser looked around the room, no doubt gauging his support. Featherston was doing the same. He didn't know how this would come out. He knew how it would come out if there were any justice in the world, but that had been in short supply for a while now. If there were any justice in the world, wouldn't the CSA have won the war? Maybe the same sorts of thoughts were going through Anthony Dresser's mind as he banged the gavel down once more and announced, "New business."
"Mr. Chairman!" Bert McWilliams' voice was more memorable than his face, but not much. When Dresser recognized him, he went on, "Mr. Chairman, I move that we remove Jake Featherston from his position as head of propaganda for the Freedom Party."
"Second!'" Ernie London said at once. Jake had expected London to bring the motion and McWilliams to second it; otherwise, he was unsurprised.
"It has been moved and seconded to remove Jake Featherston as head of propaganda," Anthony Dresser said. "I'll lead off the discussion." He rapped loudly with the gavel several times. "And we will have order and quiet from the members, unless they have been recognized to speak. Order!" Bang! Bang!
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