Harry Turtledove - Cayos in the Stream

You hack big, thick steaks from the marlin’s flank. The meat has almost the texture of beef. Grilled and seasoned with lime juice and salt and cayenne, it will be fine. The Japs eat their fish raw. You like it fresh, but not that fresh.

You haggle off another steak. Plenty of people want to stick knives into politicians after they lead them astray. They do not get the chance often enough. That they do not is another of the world’s sorrows.

Now you are well into the Archipelago de Sabana. Sometimes Josep takes the Pilar between two cayos through a channel so narrow you can piss on the beach to port, then go to the starboard rail and piss on the mangroves there. The seaweed under the boat’s keep sways in the water like grass in the breeze.

Josep never runs her aground. A good thing, too. She has gone aground before, more often than you wish she would have. It is hard on her. It is particularly hard on her motors and screws. And it is hard on your temper. When things go well, you always want everyone within buying range to share your good luck. But when things go wrong, chances are you will blame anyone else close by ahead of yourself. You are not proud of that, but you cannot seem to help it.

Then the warm sea opens out. It darkens ahead, which means it grows deeper. Josep smiles a thin smile at the wheel. His hands ease their hold a bit. Making a passage seem effortless is not the same as getting through it without effort. That is as true on the water as at the typewriter.

“Will we make Cayo Bernardo today?” you ask.

Josep considers. “We can, if you want me to fire up the Chrysler,” he replies in his peculiar Spanish. “Otherwise, tomorrow morning.”

“Save the gas,” you say after a little thought of your own. “Tomorrow morning will do. If there are Nazis on the cayo , better to have a whole day to find them and plenty of light to see them by.”

“Plenty of light for them to see us, too.” The stinking, twisted stogie jerks in his mouth.

“We can’t pull off these little tricks without taking a chance here and there.” You make your tone light. Once more, seeming effortlessness not gained without effort.

“ Si, Senor ,” Josep says. It might mean anything. It might mean nothing, only Josep is not a man in the habit of saying things that mean nothing. He adds, “The ninos will be ready.”

“The babies and the frags,” you agree. The ninos -the babies-are the Tommy guns. You swaddle them in goatskins against sea air and salt water. You carry them in the skins, too, like little children. Someone who sees them in your arms may take them for botas : leather wine flasks. And the frags will settle anyone the ninos do not. If you meet a U-boat before you make Cayo Bernardo, you have the bomb that looks like an extinguisher.

You have almost given up on meeting a U-boat. The ocean is wide. The Pilar is small. Even from the flying bridge, you cannot see far. Nor is a U-boat large, not as vessels made for war go. The top of a conning tower does not rise high above the sea. U-boats are made to be hard to spot while surfaced. When they dive, they vanish.

But a periscope does not let a U-boat under the water see far or see well. And a submerged U-boat moves slowly. It soon uses up its battery power. So U-boats hunt on the surface when they can. They go under to kill or to get away.

You can see all the way to the bottom here. The sea is as clear as a full bathtub before you get in. It is not much deeper than a bathtub, either. If the Pilar passes right over a U-boat lurking in the bath-warm water, you will see it. You will see it, yes, but you will not be able to do anything about what you see.

With its periscope, a U-boat can see you even if you do not pass right over it. The skipper in his white-crowned cap-the white crown is the only way to know he is the skipper-can take his time deciding what to do about you. If he chooses to sink you out of hand, your tale will be one of those that have not a happy ending.

Yet why should he squander a torpedo on the Pilar ? Why should he spend even a few deck-gun shells? The Pilar is no destroyer. No navy yard spawned her to slay submarines. She looks like-she is-a pleasure craft, a fishing boat.

A U-boat skipper will not know you have aboard what is left of that fighting marlin. But a canny U-boat skipper will suppose you carry something worth eating. If you have had some luck, it will be marlin or swordfish or tuna. If your luck is out, you will still have cans of roast-beef hash. You will have beer or whiskey or rum. You will likely have beer and whiskey and rum. You may have orange juice.

When did German U-boat sailors last taste orange juice? Before the war started, chances are. Or maybe when they plundered some other fishing boat.

Up on the flying bridge, your field glasses sweep the sea. They also sweep the cayos scattered across the sea at random. Cayos with beaches. Cayos with jungle. Cayos with goats that have chewed the jungle down to nubs. Cayo Bernardo was where the Nazis were-where you think they were-when word of them got to you. Nothing says they have to stay there. Your glasses sweep all the cayos .

They say a watchstander on a U-boat conning tower cannot go longer than two hours at a stretch. After that, the strain starts to tell on him. He sees things that are not there. Worse, he misses things that are.

This is the Hooligan Navy. It does not run by the clock. Your time up here is not rationed to the minute. Still, you have been up here a while. You feel it in your neck, and in your back. Pretty soon, you will go down to the deck and hand off the glasses so someone else can sweep the sea.

Handoff. Sweep. It sounds like a football game. Newspapermen write about football as if it were war. It is not war. It is a game, a kids’ game. If it were war, the players would carry knives and.45s. A halfback would score a touchdown only after the defenders went down wounded or dead.

Blood would run in the stands, too. Football stays on the gridiron, where it belongs. War has a nasty way of slopping over.

Well, what do newspapermen know? Not very goddam much. You wrote for the papers. You get that if anyone does.

You sweep the glasses along one more time. You are about to give it up and have someone else take a turn. Then-by themselves, it seems-the field glasses snap back along their track.

The water seems to boil there, a couple of hundred yards to port. It is not a dolphin leaping for joy. You see that much right away. You need just a heartbeat or two to realize it is not a dolphin’s larger cousin, either. It is not a whale rising to blow, as it was before.

It is a U-boat, a German U-boat. It dwarfs the Pilar . You knew it would, if you ever met one. As with so many things, knowing takes a back seat to seeing for yourself.

You did not know the U-boat would be ugly as old sin. You have studied photos of German submarines. But those turn out to be like photos of Hollywood starlets. Their subjects seem prettier than they really are. Hollywood starlets already look good. Type VII U-boats damn well don’t. But this one is uglier than any photograph you ever set eyes on.

That should not surprise you. A lot of your photos come from German propaganda pieces. Dr. Goebbels wants to make the Fuhrer ’s subs look as good as he can. His pictures do not show quick, sloppy welds. They do not show peeling paint. They do not show rusty patches, either. If any barnacles grow like mange on the hulls Dr. Goebbels orders photographed, his retouchers have made them disappear.

The sailors popping out of the conning tower are a mangy lot, too. They have not shaved in weeks-months, more likely. Where the face fuzz does not hide them, their skins are corpse-pale. They wear torn, grease-stained shirts and creaseless dungarees.