"Yes, sir."
"I'm not a sir. Call me 'Doc' or 'Chief.' "
"Yes, s … Chief." He wasn't sure if he did or not at this point. But it was the right thing to say. "I trust you."
"Okay. Have you been nauseous?"
"First day or two, yes… Chief. But I've been okay since then."
"Right. And… you've been to Submarine School at New Groton, right?"
"Yeah! Of course!"
"Okay, just checking. So you know about radiation alarms, ORSE inspections, and all of that. Or maybe you just slept through those lectures. Do you really think a radiation leak serious enough to make one of the crew members sick could go undetected? Or that senior crew members would cover such a thing up if it happened?"
"No, Chief. I just thought… I don't know, that maybe there was just a patch of radioactivity on a tabletop, or something, you know? Like I touched it and got it on my food or something."
Chief Pyter sighed. "Radiation doesn't work that way. Oh, granted, somebody could have sprinkled plutonium dust in your rack or something like that, but can you tell me why anybody would do that?"
"No, Chief."
"You have to trust your shipmates, son. Even when they yank your strings to make you twitch." He paused, letting that sink in. "If there was a radiation emergency on this boat, it would contaminate forward compartment by compartment. And as soon as the alarms sounded, we would seal off the contaminated areas from the rest of the boat. Does that make sense?"
"Yes…. "
"Next we would surface and try venting the affected compartments to the open air. If it was serious enough — and at that point it probably would be — the captain would evacuate the boat.
"You do not have radiation symptoms, son. Do you hear me?"
"Yes, Chief." He was trying to reorder his thinking. For an entire week he'd been living in dread, convinced he was dying. For several days, he'd been kept too busy to come down to sick bay and see anyone. And for the past couple of days, as his hair grew so patchy that several officers and petty officers had commented on his unkempt appearance, he'd simply been too afraid and too ashamed to say anything.
Not that that made any sense. But it had taken a definite act of willpower to demand that he be allowed to come down to sick call and see Chief Pyter.
Only now was he beginning to let himself relax into the idea that he wasn't sick. And yet…
"Okay, Chief. If it's not radiation, what is it? I mean… Chief Allison told me the other day I looked like I had the mange. But that's a dog disease, isn't it? Do I have mange?"
"Uh… no. It's not mange."
"Then what is it?" He reached up and pulled another tuft of hair out. "What's wrong with me?"
"Mmm." Pyter looked at O'Brien for a moment. He had a bushy mustache and light blue eyes that twinkled merrily when he was amused… like now. Damn it, what was so funny?
"Doug, you look to me like a squared-away sailor, all your shit in one seabag, know what I mean?"
"Thank you, Chief." That was not praise he'd heard before, and he sat up a bit straighter now for it.
"Don't mention it. You're always well turned out… uniform clean and neat. Good personal hygiene…. "
"Well, they stressed that hard, both in boot camp and in Sub School. Locked up in a tin can with a hundred twenty other guys… you keep yourself clean or they just might hold a blanket party."
Blanket parties — a relic of the old Navy, but not condoned any longer in this more sensitive era — were part of the hazing folklore in boot camp, a kind of boogeyman story about how offending recruits might find themselves dragged off to the head inside a blanket and given a shower that included caustic soap and a bristle brush.
"You shower every day?"
"Of course, Chief!"
"It's not 'of course.' You'd be astonished how many sailors are oblivious to their own ripe aroma. Especially after being at sea for a spell. You shampoo your hair every day?"
"Sure, Chief. I mean, it's part of the routine, right?"
"Uh-huh."
"So… when did you notice your hair was starting to fall out?"
"I don't know. I guess, maybe, a week or so after I came aboard."
"Uh-huh. And… have you discussed radiation poisoning with anyone else aboard?"
"Well… "
"It's okay, son. This isn't a mast, and I won't report you."
"Okay, I talked about it with some of the guys when it first started getting bad, y'know? But they said I could get in trouble for spreading rumors. None of them thought that's what I had either. But they didn't sound real convinced, know what I mean?"
Pyter chuckled. "I know exactly what you mean." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "You have any college,
son?"
"No, Chief. My family couldn't afford it, and my grades weren't all that great to begin with."
"But you know how fraternities will haze pledges before they get to be part of the club?"
"Oh, sure. And they told me at Sub School I'd probably get the treatment."
"Uh-huh."
When Pyter didn't elaborate, O'Brien's eyes widened, and he felt a sudden rush of anger. "Wait a minute!.. "
"Are you starting to get the picture, son?"
"Are you saying the guys are doing this somehow? Just to play a practical joke on the new guy?"
Pyter leaned back, his twinkling gaze on the overhead for a moment. "Doug, submariners are an elite community. No, a fraternity, a true brotherhood of blood and steel. You're part of a tradition that goes back to guys waiting out Japanese depth-charge attacks in stinking, steel coffins… hell it goes back eighty-seven years to America's first true submarine, the Holland, back when nobody knew if it was coming up again once it went down. Or to the Confederate Hunley going up against the Yankee Housatonic, with sixteen men aboard who knew they probably wouldn't survive the explosion when they rammed their spar home… or even back to David Bushnell in 1778, turning the hand cranks on a little tar-sealed barrel called the Turtle as he tried to get close enough to the British man-of-war Eagle in New York Harbor that he could try to attach a bag of gunpowder to the enemy's keel. His wooden screw wouldn't bite through the Eagle's copper-plated bottom, unfortunately, and the attempt failed." He waved a hand. "Beside the point. Bushnell was the first recorded submariner. He started a brotherhood of men willing to undergo some serious danger, hardship, and privation in order to carry out their missions.
"Now, submariners are a choosy lot. They want to know the men serving with them are the very best. Over the years, they've evolved some pretty sneaky ways to initiate others into the brotherhood. Some of their tests are downright vicious."
"You're saying this… what's happening to me, is a test?"
"Sort of. They're putting you through the sort of stuff they had to go through when they were nubs. It becomes a tradition, a part of your life aboard the boats. Doesn't make it easier, doesn't even make it right. But it's going to happen. You can squawk and complain and probably never be fully accepted by the rest of the crew … or you can just go along with it, take your lumps, have a good laugh when it's over… and maybe plan how you're going to get the next newbie who sets foot on board the Pittsburgh.
"Because that will happen, you know. Individuals come and go aboard the boats, but the boats remain. There'll always be another poor new guy to dump the shit on."
"I guess it's not so bad then, huh?"
"It happened to me, a good twenty years ago. All of your buddies have been through it. As a kind of initiation into an elite? No, it's not so bad." He grinned. "Did you get your invitation yet?"
"My invitation?"
"King Neptune's party. Tonight."