“Well, any way,” Bashear continued as they worked their way aft, “Skipper wants him to chart shoals and such from the air so we’ll know if we can ever get something big through here, like a ’Cat flattop. I can’t lift the plane without the winch.”
“Right,” Spanky replied, and left it at that. Reynolds had taken a lot of ribbing for shooting his own plane, but the kid had guts. Once he’d finally decided what to do with himself, he’d become a good pilot for one of the tiny, rickety-looking “Nancys,” or prototype seaplanes Ben Mallory had designed. Spanky wouldn’t have gone up in one of the things, and he respected anyone willing to do something he wouldn’t.
Together, he and Bashear cycled through the air lock into the forward fireroom. ’Cats looked up as they passed, nodding respectfully but remaining at their posts. The number two boiler was lit. Cycling through to the aft fireroom was almost like passing through another Squall to a different world all over again. In contrast to the peaceful routine they’d just left, the aft fireroom was a scene of chittering excitement, shouted commands, and almost frantic activity. Black soot floated in the air along with the downy filaments of Lemurian undercoats. Spanky sneezed again and blew his nose into his fingers. He no longer slung the snot at the deck plates as he once had, but wiped his fingers on a rag hanging from his pocket. Somehow, slinging snot at Walker just didn’t seem right anymore.
“Tabby!” He had to shout to be heard over the commotion in the fireroom.
Tab-At, or “Tabby” as the original “Mice” (a pair of extraordinarily insular and unusual firemen who actually looked quite a bit like small rodents) had christened her before she became one of the Mice herself, looked up from where she stood, striking a pose similar to the one Spanky himself often used. Her hands rested on admittedly shapelier, disconcertingly feminine hips, even though she belonged to an entirely different species. The tail that twitched beneath her abbreviated kilt at Spanky’s shout undermined the image to some degree, but oddly, not too much. As usual, whenever Spanky encountered her, she wasn’t wearing a shirt either. This time at least, she probably hadn’t been doing it just to get his goat, since her silky gray fur was lathered with sweat and covered with soot. Even so, Spanky had to take a deep breath and force himself not to bellow at her for being out of “uniform” once again. Her beguilingly… human… well-rounded breasts were the very reason he’d dictated that every fireman must wear at least a T-shirt on duty. None of the firemen in the aft fireroom had T-shirts on now, because for this task he’d given special dispensation. That didn’t mean Tabby or the several other female “firemen” they now had were included in that dispensation. Spanky had thought that was understood. Apparently it wasn’t. ’Cats could be very literal-minded-especially when they wanted to be.
“Tabby,” he repeated, “get over here!”
Bashear looked at Spanky curiously, wondering what this was about. That he hadn’t thrown an instant fit over the lack of T-shirts was strange enough. His opinion on that was common knowledge and a source of some amusement. None of the female deck apes (and there were a lot more of them) had to wear shirts for special duties that anyone else might remove theirs to perform. But Spanky McFarlane had bent as far as he intended to just by letting females of any sort into his engineering spaces. If they were going to be down there, they were going to wear clothes! Tabby tormented him constantly, but he was torn by his own personal axiom: if somebody does something that bothers you, either pretend it doesn’t or make them stop. In Tabby’s case, he couldn’t figure out how to do the second, so he tried unsuccessfully to do the first. He wasn’t fooling anybody.
Oddly, instead of undermining his authority, his… predicament probably strengthened it. Early on, he was viewed by many ’Cats as some sort of omniscient, unapproachable wizard. They now knew he wasn’t, but although they weren’t terrified of him anymore, they were amazed that a mere mortal such as they (albeit without a tail) could be so knowledgeable about machines. Wizards and magicians didn’t have to know things, or so the tales of younglings said. They just cast spells and things occurred. Spanky couldn’t cast spells; he actually knew things, and he’d come by all that knowledge the hard way: he’d learned it the same way everyone else had to, and they respected him immensely for that.
Tabby hopped over the ’Cats on the deck plates that were hauling debris from within the number three boiler with a hoe-shaped tool on their hands and knees. Others gathered the stuff up and put it in heavy canvas bags to be taken topside. Amazingly, Tabby snatched a T-shirt from a valve wheel as she approached and pulled it over her head.
“You wanna see me, sir?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah.” Spanky gestured back at the work. “That bad, eh?”
She shrugged. “Whoever overhauled that boiler did a piss-poor job on the firebrick. Waadn’t me. I guess with the hurry we were in, somebody got sloppy.”
“Probably so. You were supposed to tell me if you wound up having to tear it down and rebrick it, though.”
“We be done by tomorrow,” she assured him. “I didn’t think it was worth buggin’ you about.”
Spanky took a breath. “Now you listen to me,” he said in a low, intense tone. “Anything that affects this ship’s readiness to steam at a moment’s notice-anything the Skipper needs to know before he can make a decision based on that readiness-is always worth buggin’ me about, no matter how trivial it seems. Last I heard, you were planning on replacing a few firebricks, and I specifically told you to let me know if you had to do more. I didn’t hear from you, so I came in here thinking we still had three boilers, in a pinch. Right now, the Skipper thinks he has three boilers, but he doesn’t, does he? All he’s got is two-with a lot of crap in the way of one of’em. What if a squadron of them Brit, Imperial, Company-whatever-frigates suddenly shows up on the horizon? The Skipper’ll be deciding what to do based on his certain knowledge he’s got three boilers! Don’t ever just jump up and crack this deep into something without telling me first! Is that understood?”
Tears welled in Tabby’s large amber eyes.
Spanky was stunned. “Goddamn!” he managed. “Are you fixin’ to cry ?” His voice was incredulous. His own eyes went wide when Tabby’s tears gushed out and coursed down her furry cheeks.
“I… I so sorry!” Tabby practically moaned. As usual when she was upset or excited, she lost her careful drawl. “You got so much.. . so much other stuff; I just want to not bother you with more! I sorry, Spaanky! Please no be maad! I never, ever do nothing you no tell me! I wear shirt all the time! Just please no be maad at me!”
For a moment Spanky and Bashear were both speechless. Tabby sniffled loudly a few more times, then tried to collect herself. She began wiping the tears on her clean shirt, smudging it with wet soot and firebrick dust.
“I’ll swan,” Bashear said softly.
“Shut up, you!” Spanky growled. He turned back to Tabby. “Ah, lookie here,” he said clumsily. “No sweat. Just don’t do it anymore, see? ” Tabby nodded almost spastically. “All right, then.” He looked around, staring at anything but her for a few moments. If the work detail had heard or even paused in their labor, he couldn’t tell. They were still drawing the broken firebricks and passing them along to others, who dropped them into sacks. Finally Spanky looked back at Tabby. He was glad she’d apparently composed herself. He hadn’t come here to jump all over her; he actually had something else on his mind. Still, what he’d said was true and needed saying. Especially now.
“Look, Tabby, just get the job done, now you’ve started it. I’ll report the boiler’s down to the Skipper.” He gestured at the detail. “Things look well enough in hand.” He paused. “You’re doing a good job here in the firerooms. Those squirrelly Mice taught you all right, God knows how. I expect you know the old gal’s boilers as well as they do by now.” He paused again and took a breath. “Here’s the deal. I made Aubrey chief down here because he was a torpedoman. He knew turbines and steam plants, but he never was really all that good with the big stuff. Never should’ve used him like that. Should’ve left him working with Bernie Sandison back in Baalkpan.” He shook his head. “Well, Aubrey’s dead, and I’m going to split Engineering back into two divisions: steam plant and propulsion. Every fireman on this tub is a ’Cat now, and it would be stupid to take some guy off something else and put him in charge in here when you’d know more than he would, so as of right now, you’re chief of the boiler division, got that?”