Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

JANE ARMITAGE WAITED FOR NIGHTFALL WISHING SHE WERE DEAD, THE WAY SHE did every day. A couple of the women who’d been dragooned into the Japs’ military brothel had found ways to kill themselves. Part of her envied them, but she didn’t have the nerve to follow in their footsteps. She told herself she wanted to stay alive to see the USA avenge itself on Japan. That was true, but most of what held her back was simple fear.

She looked out through the barred window of her room. Another perfect late afternoon in Wahiawa. Not too hot, not too cold, not too muggy, not too dry. Blue sky. A few white clouds. Bright sunshine. This hell of a place was all the more hellish for sitting in the middle of paradise.

Japanese soldiers hurried by. Wherever they were going, they didn’t have time to pause for a fast fuck. Some of them acted antsy, jabbering away in their incomprehensible language, sometimes even shouting at one another. She hoped they had plenty to be antsy about.

A knock on the door. That wasn’t a horny Jap. Soon, yes, but not yet. That was supper. She opened the door. A tiny, gray-haired Chinese woman handed her a tray. She didn’t speak any English. The Japs made sure of such things. How much practice had they had running brothels like this? Plenty, plainly.

Supper was better and there was more of it than if she’d still been working her little vegetable plot. She didn’t care. The rice and fish and cabbage tasted like ashes in her mouth. She wasn’t getting close to enough to eat for her sake. Oh, no. The Japs just didn’t want her to be too skinny to please her… customers.

The Chinese woman came back in a bit to take the tray to the kitchen. She held up her hand with fingers and thumb outspread. Jane nodded dully. Next Jap soldier or sailor in five minutes.

She took off the men’s pajamas that were all they let her wear and lay down on the bed naked. Some days she couldn’t stand it and she fought, knowing fighting was hopeless. The Japs beat her up and then did what they wanted anyway. Today she didn’t have it in her to fight. If she did her best to believe it wasn’t happening, she could get through till they let her quit. Then she could go to sleep… and have another day just like this one to look forward to.

Another knock on the door, this one peremptory. Jane didn’t say anything. She just lay there. The door opened anyhow, of course. In came a Jap. He smiled at her nakedness. She pretended he wasn’t there, and kept on pretending even when he dropped his pants and got on top of her.

He did what he did. His weight was heavy on her, his breath sour in her face. He squeezed her breasts, but not quite painfully hard. It could have been worse. It had been worse, plenty of times. A slightly better than average rape. Oh, joy. He grunted and jerked and then pulled out and got off her, a stupid grin on his face. Up came his trousers. Out the door he went, without a backwards glance.

Half a minute later, another one of those here-I-come knocks. She hadn’t even had time to douche, not that that would have done much against either disease or getting knocked up. In came the next one: an older man, a sergeant. She flinched inside, and hoped it didn’t show. The older guys were more likely to be mean. They fed off fear, too.

This one let his trousers fall around his ankles in the middle of the little room and motioned for Jane to get down on her knees in front of him. She tried not to let him know she understood. She particularly hated that. She had to do it, not let it be done to her. She wanted to bite down hard every single time, too. Only the fear of what they’d do to her if she did held her back.

When she kept acting stupid, the sergeant yanked her out of bed and put her where he wanted her. He was shorter than she was, but strong as an ox. He motioned that he’d slap her into the middle of next week if she didn’t get down to business. Hating him, hating herself more, she did. At least he wasn’t very big. She gagged less that way. She wished she had enough Japanese to tell him what a little prick he was.

She hadn’t got very far when he suddenly pushed her away. That was out of the ordinary. He waddled the three or four steps to the window, pants still at half mast, and stared out. That was when Jane realized the deep bass rumble she felt as much as heard was real, was outside herself, not the product of her own mind grinding itself to pieces.

The Jap twitched as if he’d stuck his finger into an electric socket. He said something that should have set the peeling wallpaper on fire. Then, still cussing a blue streak, he pulled up his pants and dashed out of the room.

Jane jumped to her feet and ran to the window. Anything that would make him give up on a blowjob halfway through was something she had to see.

And she did. The sky was full of planes flying in from the northwest. They were a long way up, but they didn’t look like any she’d ever seen before. That and the Jap’s reaction made a sudden wild hope spring to life in her. Are they American? she thought. Please, God, let them be American. I stopped believing in You when You did this to me, but I’ll start again if they’re American. I swear I will.

Antiaircraft guns in and around Wahiawa started banging away. The racket sounded like the end of the world, but it was the sweetest music Jane had ever heard.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t just a nuisance raid like the one the year before. There were dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds, of planes up there. Nobody could have sent so many without meaning business.

Jane blinked. From what she knew about the state of the art-which, as an officer’s more or less ex-wife, was a fair amount-nobody could have sent that many planes from the mainland at all. B-17s that flew into Hawaii did so unarmed, with no bomb load, and arrived almost dry just the same. Or they had… in 1941. This was 1943. The state of the art must have changed while she wasn’t looking.

And it had, by God-by the God she began believing in again with all her heart and all her soul and all her might. The bombers started unloading on Wheeler Field and Schofield Barracks, just the other side of the Kamehameha Highway from Wahiawa.

The brothel shook. The window glass rattled. A not very badly aimed bomb would turn that glass into shrapnel-and might turn her into hamburger. She backed away from the window, tears streaming down her face. All at once, she wanted to live. And if that wasn’t a miracle, what would be?

Screams and cheers from other rooms said she wasn’t the only one, either. Then she heard another kind of scream: one of pain, not joy. One of the women trapped there must have started celebrating even with a Jap in her room. That was foolish, which didn’t mean Jane wouldn’t have done the same damn thing.

More bombs burst, and still more. It sounded as if the Americans were really giving it to the airport and the barracks. “Kill ’em all!” Jane yelled. “Come on, damn you! Kill ’em all!”

KENZO AND HIROSHI TAKAHASHI HAD THE OSHIMA MARU to themselves. Kenzo didn’t know exactly where his father was: at the Japanese consulate, the radio studio, maybe even Iolani Palace. His old man was in tight with the occupying authorities-and in hog heaven. The less Kenzo heard about it, the better he liked it.

Hiroshi was at the rudder, Kenzo minding the sampan’s sails-or rather, not minding them very well.

“Pay attention, goddammit!” Hiroshi barked. “Stop mooning about your girlfriend-she isn’t here.”

“Yeah,” Kenzo said. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Elsie. Going to bed with a girl would do that. He wasn’t likely to forget the set of lumps those Japanese soldiers had given him, either. If that had turned out even a little different, they would have kicked him to death.