Neither Sam Carsten nor Hiram Pottinger answered him. They were both on their way out of the wardroom, on their way down to their battle stations below the Remembrance's waterline. Panting, Sam asked, "Is this the real thing, or just another drill?"
"We'll find out," Pottinger answered. "Mind your head."
"Aye aye, sir," Sam said. A tall man had to do that, or he could knock himself cold hurrying from one compartment to another. He could also trip over his own feet; the hatchway doors had raised sills.
Some of the sailors in the damage-control party beat them to their station. They'd been nearby, not in the wardroom in officers' country. "Is this the McCoy?" Szczerbiakowicz asked. "Or is it just another goddamn drill?"
He shouldn't have talked about drill that way. It went against regulations. Sam didn't say anything to him about it, though. Neither did Lieutenant Commander Pottinger. All he did say was, "We'll both find out at the same time, Eyechart."
"I don't hear a bunch of airplanes taking off over our heads," Sam said hopefully. "Doesn't feel like we're taking evasive action, either. So I hope it's only a drill."
The klaxons cut off. The all-clear didn't sound right away, though. That left things up in the air for about fifteen minutes. Then the all-clear did blare out. Commander Cressy came on the intercom: "Well, that was a little more interesting than we really wanted. We had to persuade a flight patrolling out from Midway that we weren't Japs, and we had to do it without breaking wireless silence. Not easy, but we managed."
"That could have been fun," Sam said.
Some of the other opinions expressed there in the corridor under the bare lightbulbs in their wire cages were a good deal more sulfurous than that. "What's the matter with the damn flyboys?" somebody said. "We don't look like a Jap ship."
That was true, and then again it wasn't. The Remembrance had a tall island, while most Japanese carriers sported small ones or none at all. But the Japs had also converted battleship and battle-cruiser hulls into carriers. Her lines might have touched off alarm bells in the fliers' heads.
"Nice to know what was going on," a junior petty officer said. "The exec may be an iron-assed son of a bitch, but at least he fills you in."
All the sailors nodded. Sam and Hiram Pottinger exchanged amused glances. They didn't contradict the petty officer. Commander Cressy was supposed to look like an iron-assed son of a bitch to everybody who didn't know him. A big part of his job was saying no for the skipper. The skipper was the good guy. When, as occasionally happened, the answer to something was yes, he usually said it himself. That was how things worked on every ship in the Navy. The Remembrance was no exception. Some executive officers reveled in saying no. Cressy wasn't like that. He was tough, but he was fair.
Chattering, the sailors went back to their regular duties. Sam went up onto the flight deck, braving the sun for a chance to look around. Nothing special was going on. He liked that better than rushing up to jury-rig repairs after a bomb hit while enemy fighters shot up his ship. All he saw were vast sky and vaster sea, the Remembrance's supporting flotilla off in the near and middle distance. A couple of fighters buzzed overhead, one close enough to let him see the USA's eagle's head in front of crossed swords.
And a pair of albatrosses glided along behind the Remembrance. They really did look almost big enough to land. He wondered what they thought of the great ship. Or were they too birdbrained to think at all?
But this was their home. Men came here only to fight. That being so, who really were the birdbrains here?
Flora Blackford's countrymen had often frustrated her. They elected too many Democrats when she was convinced sending more Socialists to Powel House and to Congress and to statehouses around the United States would have served the country better. But she'd never imagined they could ignore large-scale murder, especially large-scale murder by the enemy in time of war.
Whether she'd imagined it or not, it was turning out to be true. She'd done just what she told Al Smith she would do: she'd trumpeted the Confederacy's massacres of Negroes as loudly and as widely as she could. She'd shown the photographs Caesar had risked his life to bring into the USA.
And she'd accomplished… not bloody much. She'd got a little ink in the papers, a little more in the weekly newsmagazines. And the public? The public had yawned. The most common response had been, Who cares what the Confederates are doing at home? We've got enough problems on account of what they're doing to us right here.
She shook her head. No, actually that wasn't the most common response. She would have known how to counter it. And even a response like that would have meant people in the USA were talking about and thinking about what was going on in the CSA. Against silence, against indifference, what could she do?
Confederate wireless hadn't called her a liar. The Freedom Party's mouthpieces hadn't bothered. Instead, they'd started yelling and screaming and jumping up and down about what they called the USA's "massacre of innocents" in Utah. They didn't bother mentioning that the Mormons had risen in rebellion.
Flora's mouth twisted as she sat in her office. She supposed the Confederates might claim Negroes had risen in rebellion against Richmond. As far as she was concerned, that served Richmond right. The Confederate States oppressed and repressed their blacks. The United States had given the Mormons full equality-and they'd risen anyhow.
Besides, the Mormons who died died in combat. The Confederates seemed to have set up special camps to dispose of their Negroes. Gather them in one place, get rid of them, and then bring in a fresh batch and do it again. It all struck her as being as efficient as a factory. If Henry Ford had decided to produce murders instead of motorcars, that was how he would have gone about it.
Bertha knocked on the office door, which took her out of her unhappy reverie. "Yes?" she said, a little relieved-or maybe more than a little-to return to the here and now.
Her secretary looked in. "The Assistant Secretary of War is here, Congresswoman."
"Oh, yes. Of course." Flora shook her head again. It was eleven o' clock. She'd had this appointment for days. This whole business with those photos really was making her forget everything else. "Please tell him to come in."
"All right." Bertha turned away. "Go on in, Mr. Roosevelt, sir." She held the door open so he could.
"Thank you very much," Franklin Roosevelt said as he propelled his wheelchair past her and into Flora's office. He was only distantly related to Theodore Roosevelt, and a solid Socialist rather than a Democrat like his more famous cousin. He did seem to have some of his namesake's capacity for getting people to pay attention to him when he said things.
"Good to see you, Mr. Roosevelt." Flora stood up, came around the desk, and held out her hand.
When Franklin Roosevelt took it, his engulfed hers. He had big hands, wide shoulders, and a barrel chest that went well with the impetuous, jut-jawed patrician good looks of his face. But his legs were shriveled and useless in his trousers. More than twenty years earlier, he'd come down with poliomyelitis. He hadn't let it stop him, but it had slowed him down. Some people said he might have been President if not for that mishap.
"Can I have Bertha bring you some coffee?" Flora asked.
"That would be very pleasant, thanks," Roosevelt replied in a resonant baritone.
"I'd like a cup, too, Bertha, if you don't mind," Flora said. She and Roosevelt made small talk over the steaming cups for a little while. Then she decided she might as well get to the point, and asked, "What can I do for you today?"
"Well, I thought I would come by to thank you for your excellent work on publicizing the outrages the Confederate States are committing against their Negroes," Roosevelt answered.
"You did?" Flora could hardly believe her ears. "To tell you the truth, I'd begun to wonder if anyone noticed."
"Well, I did," Roosevelt said. "And you can rest assured that the Negroes who are fighting for justice in the CSA have noticed, too. The War Department has made a point of being careful to let them know the government of the United States sympathizes with them in their ordeal."