Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

“You stupid fucking asshole!” Kenzo screamed back. His brother stared at him in horror. At the time, he wondered why. Later, he realized cussing out a guy with a gun wasn’t exactly Phi Beta Kappa. But, furious still, he went on, “We’re Americans, God damn you, or we will be if you fucking let us!”

By then, they were within easy range even of a pistol. The man in the raft lowered the gun. “I think maybe you mean it,” he called across the narrowing stretch of water. “You couldn’t sound that pissed off if you didn’t.”

“Right,” Kenzo said tightly. If he’d had a pistol, he wasn’t sure he could have kept himself from shooting the flier-he was that angry.

He and Hiroshi helped the man into the sampan. The flier was more battered than he’d seemed from a distance. His coveralls were tattered and torn and bloody. He gulped water as if he’d thought he would never see it again. Maybe he had. When he spoke again, his voice had changed timbre. “Jesus!” he said, and then, “Thanks, guys. If there’s anything Burt Burleson can do for you, you got it.” He paused. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m Ken,” Kenzo answered. “This is my brother, Hank.” He thought their Japanese names were best buried at the moment. “What happened to you?”

Burleson also shrugged. “About what you’d figure. Recon in a PBY. We got bounced and shot up four, five days ago. Managed to break away into some clouds, but we were on fire pretty good by then. Pilot tried to put her in the water. It wasn’t pretty. I was tail gunner. I think I was the only guy who got out.” His face closed in on itself. “Till the two of you saw me, I wasn’t sure I had the clean end of the stick, either.”

“We’ll do what we can for you,” Kenzo said again. “Get you ashore some kind of way without anybody seeing.”

“Have any food?” Burleson asked. “I managed to catch a mackerel with the line they gave me, but raw fish ain’t my idea of fun.”

Kenzo and Hiroshi both broke up then. Kenzo didn’t know about his brother, but he felt on the ragged edge of hysteria. The flier stared from one of them to the other, wondering if they’d gone off their rockers. Maybe they had, at least a little. Carefully, Kenzo said, “Next to what you’ll get on Oahu, raw fish is pretty good.”

“We are Japanese,” Hiroshi added. “We grew up eating the stuff. We don’t mind it so much. And it’s a hell of a lot better than going hungry.”

Burleson contemplated that. He didn’t need much contemplation before he nodded. “Yeah. No argument. Took me a while before I caught anything. ”

“We’re gonna finish our run, too,” Kenzo said. “We can’t go back to Kewalo Basin without a catch. People will wonder why if we do.”

“I was hoping you would think of that,” Hiroshi said. Neither of them had used a word of Japanese since Burleson came aboard. They hadn’t been speaking Japanese before, either, but now things had changed.

It was a language they could share if they had to. It was also dangerous, because the flier still had the.45 on his hip.

He seemed tractable enough now. “Do what you need to do, sure,” he said. “I’ll help, best I can. I know how to gut fish. Everybody goes fishing in Minnesota.”

“Minnesota.” All Kenzo knew about the place was that it bumped up against Canada and it was cold as hell in the wintertime. “You’re a long way from home.”

“You better believe it,” Burleson said. “I was thinking that when I was in the raft there. Well, I got another chance now. Thanks, guys.”

He couldn’t have put it any better than that. And, even though he was a long way from at his best, he did help with the gutting when the Takahashi brothers brought in their catch. Kenzo offered him a strip of prime ahi flesh. “Here-try this. It’s a lot better than mackerel.”

Burleson tasted warily, then ate with real enthusiasm. “Damned if you’re not right, Ken. It’s not so-fishy-like. But it’s still fish. That’s pretty funny, eh?”

“Steak and lamb chops don’t taste the same,” Kenzo said, and then wished he hadn’t. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had either. But Burleson nodded, so he supposed he’d made his point.

After a while, the American flier said, “You’re not throwing anything back, are you?”

“Not these days,” Hiroshi answered. “We used to, sure, but now it gets eaten as long as it’s not poisonous. Like we said before, nobody’s fussy.”

“If there were any fussy people, they starved a long time ago,” Kenzo added.

“What are you going to do about me?” Burleson asked.

“Drop you on a beach somewhere and say good luck,” Kenzo told him. “What else can we do? We’ll take you to Kewalo Basin if you want to surrender to the Japanese. They’ll have soldiers there to take charge of the catch.”

Burt Burleson shuddered. “No, thanks. I’ve heard about how they treat prisoners. You guys know anything about that?”

“We’ve seen labor gangs. The POWs in ’em are pretty skinny. I don’t think they get fed much,” Kenzo said. “The soldiers who run ’em can act pretty mean, too.” All that was true. If he told Burleson how big an understatement it was, the flier might not believe him.

What he did say seemed plenty. “Okay, I’ll take my chances on the beach,” Burleson said, and then, “Um-can you pick one close to a place with lots of white people so I blend in better?”

So they won’t turn me in, he meant. But Kenzo and Hiroshi both nodded. It was a legitimate point. Hiroshi said, “Don’t trust a haole too far just because he’s a haole. There are more Japanese collaborators, yeah, but there are white ones and Chinese and Filipinos, too.”

“Terrific,” Burleson said bleakly. “Sounds like we’re gonna need to clean up this joint-clean out this joint-once we get it back.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Kenzo said, and tried not to think about his father.

For somebody who’d sneered at raw fish, Burt Burleson put away a hell of a lot of it. Kenzo didn’t begrudge him. Floating on the Pacific wondering whether you’d live or die and sure your buddies were already dead couldn’t have been much fun.

Kenzo waited till sundown to start the Oshima Maru back towards Oahu. He wanted to get there in the wee small hours, when people were least likely to see Burleson splashing ashore. He steered by the stars. He and Hiroshi had both got pretty good at that.

Burleson stayed awake, which surprised Kenzo a little. When he asked about it, the flier laughed and said, “I slept as much as I could in that goddamn raft-what else did I have to do? I can stay awake for this. Besides”-another laugh-“now I can see where I’m going, not where I’ve been like in the PBY.”

The moon crawled across the sky. Oahu came up over the northwestern horizon, pretty much where Kenzo had expected it to be. He steered for Ewa. There were Japanese everywhere on Oahu, of course. With the population a third Japanese, there wouldn’t be many places without them. He wondered if Burleson realized that. But he would do what he could for the flier.

He almost ran the Oshima Maru aground doing it. That wouldn’t have been so good, which was putting it mildly. But Burt Burleson went over the side with a muttered, “God bless you guys.” He struck out for the beach, which wasn’t very far. Kenzo steered away from the coast to give himself some sea room.

Dawn was staining the sky with salmon-belly pink when the sampan came into Kewalo Basin. Nobody got excited about that; sampans went in and came out all the time. As usual, Japanese soldiers took charge of the catch. They paid Kenzo and Hiroshi by weight, and winked at the fish the brothers carried off “for personal use.” The noncoms in charge of the details got fish from the Takahashis and other fishermen to make sure they didn’t fuss about things like that. One hand washed the other.