"I said," Queensly repeated, "how's it feel to be a bluenose?"
"Uh… what? Sorry. Okay, I guess." He shook his head, groggy. "I'm not really awake yet."
Queensly laughed. "That I can believe. Hey, Grisly! Fetch this man some java."
ST2 Griswold rose from his console seat. "Comin' right up, Queenie. Anything for you?"
"I'm fine, Gris. Thanks." He clapped Wallace on the shoulder. "So, they kept you up late, huh?"
Wallace could only nod.
"It was a hell of party," Chief Evans said. Evans was the boat's senior sonar chief, the man in charge of the department and Wallace's new boss. Off watch, he was enjoying a chief's prerogative and lollygagging — hanging around the sonar shack to gossip. ST2 Dyer was the other watch stander, currently huddled over his console with his ears engulfed by a massive set of sonar headphones. "They turned those poor pollywogs every way but loose!" He reached out and dragged a blunt forefinger down the side of Wallace's nose. "You still have some paint there, youngster."
Wallace rubbed at the spot.
"You got it," Queensly said. "So what all did they do to you?" Queensly had not been in attendance last night. He'd been here, running the sonar watch. Wallace wondered how he could look so fresh after… what? Twelve straight hours, now.
"I'm pretty hazy on it all, right now," Wallace admitted. "It was kind of confusing."
"Well, I see you got the royal haircut from the royal barber."
Wallace grinned ruefully and ran his hand over his clean-shaven scalp. Part of the pollywogs' sentence had been to have their heads — and select other parts of their anatomy — completely shaved. His skin was still pretty raw in places. "Yeah. The worst part, I think, was when they made us go fishing for ice cubes." They'd made the pollywogs kneel around a large steel tub — just like bobbing for apples — only the apples were ice cubes, and they were hidden inside a foot-deep mess of something indescribable and very unpleasant. "What was that stuff, anyway?"
Evans laughed. "Hey, like old King Borealis told you, you've gotta eat shit to be accepted by the rest of us!"
Wallace grimaced at the mental image. The tub, he was pretty sure, had been full of stuff like cooking oil, grease, and maybe a few pounds of chocolate or cocoa powder to give it its lumpy semisolid consistency, and not what Evans was suggesting. Still…
At least his head had been shaved by that time, or else he'd still be pulling the stuff out of his hair.
"Joe," Griswold said, reentering the sonar shack. "Get it while it's hot."
Wallace accepted a mug full of steaming black coffee. "Why do you call it joe?" he asked, hoping to change the subject.
"Ah, therein lies a tale," Chief Evans said, leaning far back in his swivel chair. "In this man's Navy, there are five grades of coffee. They are, from best to worst, coffee, joe, java, jamoke, and battery acid. Only officers rate coffee, of course. On a submarine, the enlisted men can usually expect joe… unless it's toward the end of a deployment, of course. Then the coffee's almost gone, and the galley hands are cutting it with God knows what."
"Okay… but why 'joe'?"
"Because the guy who outlawed rum on U.S. Navy ships was named Josephus Daniels. He was secretary of the navy in 1914 when he signed General Order 99 which prohibits… let's see, 'the use or introduction for drinking purposes of alcoholic liquors on board any naval vessel, or within any navy yard or station.' Congress had been pushing for using coffee as a substitute for twenty years before that. So they called coffee 'joe' in his honor."
"You're full of shit, Chief," said Dyer, removing his headset and turning to join the conversation. "It was a fuckin' racist slur from an old song, 'Old Black Joe.' " James Dyer was African American.
"The hell it was. Who's telling this story, you or me?"
"You are, Chief. I'm just telling you—"
"It was from Joe Daniels, man. Everybody knows that." He took a swig from his own mug. "Hey, here's a bit of trivia for you guys. Did you know the U.S. Navy uses more coffee per man than any other naval or military organization in the world? Fifty years ago, the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts figured the Navy used over twenty-five tons of coffee per day."
"Man, you are just chock full of fascinating data," Queensly said. "How much do we use today?"
"How the hell should I know?" Evans said. "I don't work in supply."
"So what's with the names java and jamoke?" Gris-wold asked.
"Probably just, whatcha call 'em, euphemisms," Evans said. "You know, they sound good together." He snapped his fingers, chanting, 'joe,' 'java,' 'jamoke'…"
"I think you mean 'euphonious,' Chief," Queensly said. "And you forgot 'murk' and 'shot-in-the-arm' and 'caffeine fix' and 'battery acid.' "
Wallace dared a sip of his coffee, then grimaced. He usually took it with creamer and sugar, and the black potion was way too bitter by itself.
"How is it?" Griswold asked.
"At least I know how it got the name 'battery acid,' " Wallace replied. "Yagh. Is this still part of the initiation?"
Evans laughed. "No, youngster. You are now a full-fledged and genu-wine blue-nosed gold dragon, with all rights and privileges thereunto, including, I might add, the right to bitch about the coffee. I think that pot's been on the hot plate since the forenoon watch yesterday."
"So… yesterday," Wallace said. "Was that Sunday? Or Saturday?"
Griswold chuckled. "Still wondering what day it is?"
"Well, I know we crossed the international date line last night…"
"Right," Evans said. "Actually, we're not up to the 180-degree meridian, yet, but the line takes a jog through the Bering Strait to avoid cutting off a piece of Siberia. When we crossed the line, we lost a day. It was Sunday. Now it's Monday."
"What was it last night, when Neptune was asking me questions?"
"Trick question, youngster," Evans said, chuckling.
"It was about 2400 hours, give or take. Midnight. And when it's midnight on the international date line, it's high noon in Greenwich, England."
"So? What's the point?"
"When it's noon in Greenwich is the only time when it's the same date everywhere on Earth. It was— and still is — Monday."
"But I thought you said we'd lost a day. I remember Sunday… yesterday. And you say today is Monday… "
"Don't worry about it, son," Queensly said. "It catches up with you, see? They'll probably adjust the shipboard calendars later in the cruise, when it's convenient."
"Maybe they'll get rid of Thursday," Griswold said, looking up at the fluorescent-lit overhead. "I never did get the hang of Thursdays…."
Wallace shook his head. "I still don't get it."
"Not important that you do, Seaman Wallace. It is important, though, that you get checked out on this board."
"Okay." He was feeling a bit more awake, now, but the mysteries of the sonar board were still daunting. "But I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing."
"Listen and learn, Seaman Wallace. Listen and learn. And… have a listen to this."
Reaching out, he tapped a point on a touch-screen display. Instantly, the sonar shack was filled with a roar, a rushing, white-noise rumble that reminded Wallace of an oncoming train.
"What do you hear?"
Wallace wasn't sure how to answer the question. "Uh… I don't know. A roaring noise. Is that a surface ship?"
"No. If it were a surface ship — or another submarine — you'd hear a kind of a throb to the sound… like this." He touched the controls again. The rushing roar vanished, replaced by a muffled thud-thud-thud. "From our sound library," Queensly said. "That was a Japanese maru, what they call their freighters. No… what do you hear when I do this?" Instantly, the compartment filled once more with a featureless roar… kind of like a waterfall, Wallace decided.