Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

“Ain’t it the truth!” Fletch said with more feeling than grammar. “But maybe some can.” Awkwardly, he dropped to one knee. “Hon, since the divorce never got finished, will you please stay married to me?”

Jane stared at him. Then she started to laugh again. “You didn’t do that the first time you proposed to me!”

“Well, I know you better now, and I mean it more, too,” he said. “And I’ll try to be a better husband, too. I won’t promise the moon, but I’ll try. So will you?”

“Get up, silly,” she said softly. “Will I?” She seemed to be asking him as much as herself. Slowly, she nodded. “I think I will, if you’re crazy enough to still want me. We’ll see how it goes, I guess. And if it doesn’t… one of us’ll file papers again, that’s all.”

“Sure.” Fletch agreed more because he didn’t feel like arguing than because he wanted to think about papers and lawyers and all the other delights he’d known just before the Japs invaded. But he’d known other delights since; next to time as a Japanese prisoner, even lawyers didn’t look so bad. Next to hell, purgatory probably seemed a pretty nice part of town. He grunted a little as he got to his feet. “Thank you, babe!”

“Don’t thank me yet, Fletch,” Jane said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re still on probation. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, I will go back to a lawyer.” She eyed him with mock-he hoped it was mock-severity. “That’s a threat, buster. You’re not supposed to grin like a fool after I make a threat.”

“No, huh? Not even when I’m happy?” Fletch pulled the corners of his mouth down, using one index finger for each corner. “There. Is that better?” he asked, blurrily, fingers still in place.

Jane snorted. “So help me God, you’re crazy as a bedbug.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” Fletch saluted her with as much precision as if he were a plebe back at West Point. “May I please kiss the bride to be, wife to be, whatever-the-heck to be, ma’am?”

Most of the time, after you’d just more or less proposed and she said yes, the answer to that was automatic. Looking at Jane’s face, he knew it wasn’t here. When he remembered why, some of his own joy chilled within him. But she nodded after a couple of seconds. “Carefully,” she said.

“Carefully,” he promised.

He held her with as much formal reserve as if they were waltzing together for the first time. She closed her eyes and raised her chin, looking about one-quarter eager and three-quarters scared to death. He kissed her. It was more than a brush of his lips across hers, but less than half of what he wanted it to be: the same sort of kiss he’d given her the last time he came back here.

When it was over, he let her go right away. “Okay?” he asked.

She nodded again. “Okay. Thank you.” She looked out the window, across the room-anywhere but at him. “This won’t be easy. I’m sorry. If you want to change your mind, I can see why you would.”

“Not me,” he said. “I figured there’d be bumps in the road. But hey-at least there’s a road. The last couple of years…” He didn’t go on, or need to. “So let’s do like you said-we’ll see how it goes, and we’ll go from there. Deal?”

“Deal.” Jane held out her hand.

Fletch shook it. “And I brought you another present, too.” He pulled out two packs of Luckies.

“Wow!” She all but snatched them out of his hands. “The way things are, they’re better than roses.” She opened a pack and stuck a cigarette in her mouth. He lit it for her. “Wow!” she said again after the first drag.

“I better go,” Fletch said. She didn’t tell him to stay, however much he wished she would have. He paused with his hand on the knob. “One more thing. If they ship me out-no, when they ship me out-I’ll be paying those bastards back for you.”

“Yeah.” Jane took another deep drag on the Lucky. “That’s a deal, too, Fletch.”

AUTUMN. For more than thirty years, it had been only a word to Jiro Takahashi. It was always summer in Hawaii. A little warmer, a little cooler, a little drier, a little wetter-so what? Summer, endless summer.

But now, against all odds, he was back in Japan, and he had to remember what seasons were like. Southern Honshu had always prided itself on its good weather, with the Inland Sea helping to keep things moderate. Jiro supposed it wasn’t as bad here as it was up in Hokkaido, where they got real blizzards every winter. It still seemed chilly and nasty to him.

I’ve been spoiled, he thought.

The authorities were doing their best to keep him happy. His broadcasts from Hawaii had made him something of a celebrity in the home islands. A grumpy celebrity wasn’t good.

He thought he would have been happier if they’d let him stay next door in Yamaguchi Prefecture, where he’d been born. He’d visited his old village. He had a brother and a sister there, and a few old acquaintances. It proved more awkward than he’d expected; no one knew what to say. After so many years apart, he didn’t have much in common with family or former friends.

Maybe the people who ran things were smart to keep him in a big city. He could visit again whenever he wanted to-if he wanted to. Yamaguchi Prefecture remained overwhelmingly rural. It was livelier than it had been when he left, but next to the hustle and bustle he’d known in Honolulu it seemed, if not dead, then very, very sleepy.

For instance, it had no town with first-rate broadcasting facilities. They wanted to keep him on the radio, as if his broadcasts could somehow compensate for the loss of Hawaii. Nobody ever came right out and said Hawaii was lost; it just stopped showing up in the news. Jiro hoped his sons had come through the fighting. He also hoped they were happy under American rule once more. He knew he wouldn’t have been-and he knew the Americans wouldn’t have been happy with him.

He got off the trolley at the stop closest to the studio. It was only a block or two from the domed Industrial Promotion Hall in the center of town. When he looked north, the Chugoku-sanshi Range loomed over the city skyline. The mountains didn’t have snow on them yet, but they would by the time winter was over. He hadn’t even seen snow since coming to Oahu. He supposed seeing it wasn’t so bad. Dealing with it… If he had to, he had to, that was all.

“Hello, Takahashi- san .” The local broadcaster’s name was Junchiro Hozumi. He reminded Jiro of a cheap imitation of Osami Murata. He cracked crude, stupid jokes and breathed in your face to show how friendly he was. He did have a smooth baritone, though. He said, “Today shall we talk about how you came back to Japan?”

Jiro thought about that. He remembered how terribly overcrowded the submarine was, and how the stink almost knocked you off your feet. He remembered the heart-pounding fear as the boat sneaked, submerged, past the American ships that had by then surrounded Oahu. He remembered the shrill pings of the enemy’s echo-tracker, and the crash and boom of bursting depth charges. He remembered how the submarine shook, as if in an undersea earthquake. And he remembered how fear turned to terror.

Did Hozumi understand what he was asking? Did he want his listeners hearing things like that? What would the government do to him-and to Jiro- if they went out over the air? Nothing good; Jiro was sure of that. As tactfully as he could, he said, “Maybe we’d better pick something else, Hozumi- san .”

For a wonder, Hozumi got the message. His grin was wide and friendly and showed a gold front tooth.

“Whatever you say. How about being able to eat proper rice now that you’re in the home islands again?”