“Now, now,” admonished Courtney gently, “I can certainly see your point. But one mustn’t be unkind.”
Besides Sandra and Karen Theimer Letts, only two other Navy nurses had survived: Pam Cross and Kathy McCoy. Pam was engaged in a torrid part-time affair with Dennis Silva, and for a time that had left only one known, and… wholesomely unattached female in the entire world: Kathy McCoy. This intolerable situation had resulted in the increasingly desperate “dame famine.” That famine still existed to a degree. The only practical means of truly breaking it seemed to lie in establishing good relations with the Empire, but there were a few more women in Baalkpan now. There’d been four nannies, not counting Sister Audry, on S-19 to care for the twenty children of diplomats and industrialists aboard the sub. Two of them, one British and the “ridiculous” Dutchwoman, dropped all pretense of nannyhood and had taken it upon themselves to “thank” as many of their destroyermen rescuers as they could in the best way they knew how, as soon as they returned to Baalkpan after the battle. Both women were rather plain and had probably landed right in the middle of their version of heaven. Perhaps the dame famine was broken, but in spite of terrible losses, the male-to-female ratio was very considerably out of whack. They were only two women, after all, and their energy and gratitude had limits. For now, the dame drought still smoldered.
“Besides,” Courtney continued, “your mother surely found a far safer transport, in retrospect.”
“Possibly,” Abel allowed, but his tone sounded unconvinced. For a while, the pair walked in silence.
Beyond the breastworks, they entered what was left of the old warehouse district and followed the strains of music that gradually emerged from the general noise of the nearby industrial productivity. The music came from Marvaney’s portable phonograph-a larger, tin resonance chamber had been attached to increase the volume. Bradford didn’t recognize the tune, but he rarely recognized any of the music recorded on the depleted, but still large collection of 78s the dead gunner’s mate had owned. The surviving records were almost all upbeat American tunes: jazzy, or something the destroyermen called swing. There were a few whimsical Western songs, and some stuff the men called country that sounded more like Celtic chanteys than anything else. Bradford was a classicist, and to his horror he’d learned the late Marvaney had been too, but most of his collection of that sort of music had been used as an object of weight to carry his corpse to the deep. Regardless, all the records were priceless relics now and were carefully maintained. It was rare that two songs were played in a row without a pause to sharpen the needle.
Bradford knew that sometimes, at night, they had live music at the Busted Screw. A small percentage of the Americans had been musicians, of a sort, and like virtually every item nonessential to the two destroyers’ final sortie, their instruments had been off-loaded. There were several guitars, a pair of ukuleles, a trombone, and a saxophone from Walker. A concertina, a trumpet, and a violin came from Mahan. Oddly, a pump organ, of all things, had been aboard S-19. Bradford knew space had been extremely limited on the old submarine and he again wondered vaguely where it had been kept and how they’d managed to get it through a hatch to salvage it. It wasn’t much larger than a console Victrola, but still… at least there’d been a considerable collection of classical sheet music tucked inside. The original owner was dead, but a lot of the fellows could play a piano. Bradford couldn’t, really, but he could read music. He’d attended a concert at the Busted Screw and had to say the sound created by the unlikely orchestra had been… unusual. Throw in a variety of Lemurian instruments, and he couldn’t quite describe the result. He wasn’t without hope that the bizarre ensemble might eventually be arranged into something less cacophonous.
Outside the Screw, on a makeshift hammock slung between two trees on the beach, Earl Lanier lounged in bloated repose. He wore shorts, “go-forwards,” and had eyeshades on. There was a large, faded, bluish tattoo of a fouled anchor on his chest, pointing almost directly at a bright pink, puckered scar above his distended belly button. He wore no shirt, and other than a thick mat of dark, curly hair, they were the only things upon his otherwise tanned, ample belly. Beside the hammock stood the battered, precious Coke machine, powered by a doubtlessly clandestine heavy-gauge wire. As Courtney and Abel watched, a black-furred ’Cat with specks of white appeared, complete with a towel over his arm, and took a chilled mug of something from inside the machine and handed it to Lanier. Before Bradford could form an indignant comment, Pepper retrieved another pair of mugs and brought them over.
“One is, ah, you call it beer,” he said, knowing Bradford’s preference for the exceptional Lemurian brew. He looked at the boy before handing him a mug. “The other is a most benevolent and benign nectar.”
“Thank you, dear fellow,” Courtney said. “I was just about to ask why you put up with such treatment from that ludicrous creature.”
Pepper grinned. “I like cool drinks,” he said, and gestured toward the shade of the club, “and so do guys.” He shrugged. “No happy Earl, no Coke machine. Also, I like being assistant cook. I like to cook. You wanna eat?”
“Well, now that you mention it…” Courtney and Abel followed Pepper under the shade and plopped themselves on bar stools before a planked countertop.
“What’ll it be?” Pepper asked as their eyes became accustomed to the shade. “I know you not like fish, but I got fresh pleezy-sore steaks.”
“Plesiosaur,” Bradford corrected, almost resignedly. “That will be fine. At least they aren’t technically fish.”
“It is quite good, actually,” came a small voice nearby. Bradford squinted and realized that Princess Rebecca sat almost beside him.
“Goodness gracious, my dear!” Courtney exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing here?” He glanced quickly around. Abel had suddenly become very still and Bradford suspected, if he could see it, he’d discover a deep blush covering the boy’s face. Apparently, sometime during their seclusion on Talaud Island, the young midshipman became smitten with the princess. He wondered if he’d known she’d be here. “And where is that abominable Dennis Silva, your supposed protector?”
Silva popped up from behind the bar like a jack-in-the-box. He teetered slightly. “Right here, Mr. Bradford, and I’m ambulatin’ fairly well. Thanks for askin’.”
Courtney was taken aback by Silva’s sudden, towering presence. He was also just about certain he’d quite understood the word “abominable.” Silva had always traded shamelessly in being much more than he appeared to be, and that was doubly true now. Bradford liked the big gunner’s mate-chief gunner’s mate now-and honestly owed him multiple lives, but if Silva had been frightening before, the eye patch and spray of scars across his bearded face made him positively terrifying. Particularly since Bradford knew Silva’s capacity for violence was exponentially greater than his appearance implied as well-and his appearance implied quite a lot. Nevertheless, he stood and faced the apparition with a stern glare.