“I expect you’re right.” Carsten went up onto the main deck, made his way back to where he’d been working, and reattached his safety line. He might as well have been starting over from scratch; plenty of seawater had splashed up since he’d dashed to his battle station.
Vic Crosetti resumed his place a minute or so later. They were jawing back and forth when a starched young lieutenant, junior grade, came up and said, “Seaman Carsten?” When Sam admitted he was himself, the officer said, “The force commander will see you in his cabin immediately.”
“Sir?” If Sam’s heart didn’t skip a beat, he couldn’t guess why. He hadn’t thought Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske knew he existed. Like any other sensible sailor, he’d hoped that pleasant condition would continue indefinitely. In a choking voice, he asked, “What does he think I’ve done, sir?”
“Come with me, Carsten,” the j.g. answered, and Sam, a lump of ice about the size of the nearby Antarctic continent in his belly, had to obey.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed another officer bringing Vic Crosetti along. God damn that little dago, he thought. What’s he done, and how in hell did I get in hot water for it?
He seldom had occasion to go up into officers’ country. He’d never had occasion to visit the force commander’s quarters, nor imagined that he would. Sure as hell, Vic Crosetti was heading there, too. Carsten cursed under his breath.
The lieutenant, j.g., went in ahead of him, then came back out and said, “The admiral will see you-both of you-now.” As they went in, Crosetti gave Sam a venomous glare. Christ, Sam thought, does he figure he’s in trouble on account of something I did? What kind of foul-up have we got here?
There stood Rear Admiral Fiske, a sturdy man of about sixty, in the middle of a cabin that could have held half a dozen three-level bunks. So much space inside the Dakota was amazing. Even more amazing was the bottle of medicinal brandy Fiske held, and that he poured three glasses from it, handing one to Sam and one to Crosetti and keeping the third for himself. “Congratulations, you men!” he boomed.
Carsten and Crosetti stared at each other, then at Rear Admiral Fiske. Sam felt as if he’d been up and down too fast on the Coney Island roller coaster. He had to say something. He knew he had to say something. “Sir?” His voice was a hoarse croak.
Fiske looked impatient. He knew what was going on, which struck Carsten as an unfair advantage. “Some time ago, you two men reported your suspicions that a certain native of the Sandwich Islands, one John Liholiho, used his position and good nature to spy for England after the USA took the said islands from her at the outbreak of the war. Investigation has confirmed those suspicions, I am informed by wireless telegraph. Liholiho has been arrested and sentenced to death.”
“Sir?” Sam and Crosetti said it together now, in astonishment. Sam had almost forgotten about the affable, surf-riding Sandwich Islander. He’d long since assumed Liholiho wasn’t in fact a spy, because no one had said anything to the contrary.
Fiske was saying that now. He was also saying something else: “You men are both promoted from Seaman First Class to Petty Officer Third Class, effective the date of your report. Back pay in your new rank will also accrue from the said date.” He raised his glass in salute. “Well done, both of you!” He drank.
Numbly, Carsten raised his own glass. Numbly, he drank, and discovered the rear admiral got a much better grade of medicine than did the men he commanded. After the stuff went off like a bomb in his stomach, he wasn’t numb any more. He tried on a smile for size. It fit his face like a glove.
As Scipio walked down the road toward the swamp, he knew he was a dead man. Oh, his lungs still moved air in and out, his heart still beat, his legs still took step after step. He was a dead man even so. The only questions left were who would kill him, how soon, and how long he’d hurt before he finally died.
He looked back over his shoulder. Somewhere back there, Anne Colleton was liable to have a scope-mounted Tredegar aimed at his spine. She’d had one slung on her back when she sent him out on his way to the swamps by the Congaree. By the way she handled it, she knew just what to do with it, too.
She’d started following him. He didn’t know if she still was. He’d caught glimpses of her once or twice, but only once or twice. He got the idea she’d wanted him to get those glimpses, to remind him she was on his trail. When she wanted him not to see her, he didn’t. He’d never dreamt she could stalk like that.
Was she good enough to stalk Cassius? Scipio found that hard to believe. Cassius had been Marshlands’ chief hunter for years. What he didn’t know about the swamps of the Congaree, no one did. He’d been able to keep the raiders who were the hard core of the Congaree Socialist Republic a going concern in the swamp for most of a year after the Socialist Republic was crushed everywhere else.
And Cassius and the rest of the Red holdouts were about as likely to kill him as Anne Colleton was. If they found out he was acting as her bird dog, they would kill him. They might kill him simply for abandoning the cause and trying to live what passed for a normal life in the CSA after the black uprising went down to defeat.
Something rose from the roadside marsh in a thunder of wings. Scipio’s heart rose, too, into his throat. But it was only an egret, flapping away from his unwanted company. When he was a boy, the big white birds had been far more common than they were today. The demand for plumes on ladies’ hats had all but caused their extermination. Only a shift in fashion let any survive.
Here where-he hoped-no one could hear him, he trotted out the educated white man’s voice he’d used while serving as butler at Marshlands: “And what shift in fashion will let me survive?” For the life of him-literally, for the life of him-he could think of none.
He looked around. Water, rushes, trees. The road was turning into a muddy track. Everything seemed prosaic enough. Of course, he was only on the edge of the swamp as yet. The Negro field hands back at Marshlands had peopled the wet country with monsters with sharp teeth and glowing yellow eyes.
Those stories were nothing but superstitious twaddle. So claimed the part of him that had been so carefully educated. The little boy who had listened round-eyed to the stories the grannies told wasn’t so sure. He looked around again, more nervously this time. Nothing. Only swamp. Of course, that meant cougars and gators and cottonmouths and rattlers and-he slapped-mosquitoes and the no-see-’ems that bit and vanished. He slapped again.
The road forked, and then forked again, and then again. It went in among the trees now, and the oaks and willows and pines made the sun play hide-and-seek. The road divided yet again. Every turn Scipio took was one leading deeper into the swamp.
If he didn’t find the men of the Congaree Socialist Republic, he wondered if he’d be able to find his way out. If Cassius didn’t kill him, and if Anne Colleton didn’t kill him, the swamp was liable to do him in.
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than three Negroes with Tredegars stepped silently out into the roadway. They wore red bandannas on their left arms. “Nigger, you ain’t got no good reason to be here, you is one dead nigger,” one of them said. Two of their rifles were bayoneted. They wouldn’t even have to risk the noise of a gunshot to dispose of him.
He licked his lips. The bayonets looked very long and sharp. “I wants to see Cassius, or maybe Cherry,” he answered in the broad patois of the Congaree. “I is on de business o’de Socialist Republic.”
None of the three fighting men was from Marshlands or any nearby plantation. They didn’t know him by sight, as many of Cassius’ men would have. “Who you is?” their spokesman asked.
“I’s Scipio,” he said.
Their eyes went wide in their dark faces. They knew the name, if not the man who went with it. “Maybe you is, an’ maybe you ain’t,” said the one who had spoken first.