Harry Turtledove - End of the Beginning

He marched on, feeling better.

JIM PETERSON WAS DEEP in the bowels of the Koolau Range when he heard explosions outside the tunnel mouth. He leaned on his pick for a moment, trying to catch his breath. Any excuse to pause for a little while was a good one. Every time he lifted the pick and bit into the mountainside with it, he wondered if he could do it again. The question was altogether serious. Men quietly fell over and died every day. He’d helped carry Gordy Braddon to a grave-after his usual shift was over, of course. If your knees were bigger around than your thighs, as Gordy’s had been for quite a while, you weren’t a prime physical specimen. By now, there were damn few prisoners in the Kalihi Valley of whom that wasn’t true. It was sure as hell true of him.

The Japanese cared less about the tunnel than they did about working the POWs to death-or beating them to death or shooting them at the slightest excuse or just for the fun of it. The only way they might have got rid of the prisoners faster was by building a railroad through the jungle. Unlike the tunnel, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere, but that might not have stopped them.

More explosions. “What the hell?” Charlie Kaapu said. He stood out in the mob of tunnel rats, because he was twice as strong as most of them. He hadn’t been there long enough to deteriorate badly. And he’d been a civilian before, not a POW, so he’d just gone hungry; he hadn’t been on a starvation diet.

“Sounds like bombs,” Peterson said.

“Lots of bombs, if that’s what it is,” Charlie said, and Peterson had a hard time disagreeing. U.S. raids on Hawaii hadn’t amounted to anything but annoyances up till now. Still more distant booms came echoing up the shaft. Whatever they were, they were too big to be just an annoyance.

The same thought occurred to somebody else. “Can’t be bombs,” a weary but authoritative voice said.

“Wish it could, but there’s too damn many of ’em. How could the USA get that many bombers over Oahu? No way, nohow. Gotta be the Japs blowing something up.”

“They can blow themselves up-or just blow themselves. Don’t make no difference to me,” somebody else chipped in.

When the men with picks paused, the men with shovels couldn’t load rubble for the men with baskets to carry out of the tunnel: there wasn’t any rubble to load. And when the men with baskets didn’t come staggering out of the tunnel at intervals short enough to suit the Japanese, guards came in to find out what the hell was going on. A POW near the tunnel mouth called, “Heads up!” to warn the men at the end of the shaft.

With a groan, Peterson lifted the pick. It seemed to weigh sixteen tons. He swung it back and brought it forward. It bit into the volcanic rock. Grunting, he pulled it free and swung it again.

Moments later, he heard the Japs yelling as they approached. They sounded mad as hell. They often did, but this was worse than usual. And their progress up the shaft could be noted by cries of pain from the prisoners they passed. That meant they were swinging their damn bamboo swagger sticks at whoever was unlucky enough to get within range.

They hadn’t done that much for a while, not inside the tunnel. What were they so jumpy about? Peterson got a crack across the back that sent him staggering into the rough rock wall. That gave him more scrapes and lumps.

Charlie Kaapu got whacked, too. He took it with a grin, which made the guard hit him again. He kept grinning, and hefted his pick. It wasn’t a threat, or didn’t have to be one, for he slammed the pick into the rock a moment later. But that guard found something else to do pretty damn quick.

As soon as the Jap was out of earshot, Charlie said, “I bet the USA is doing something. These little cocksuckers wouldn’t be so jumpy if we weren’t.”

Is that hope I feel? Jim Peterson wondered. He’d gone without so long, he had trouble recognizing it. He’d had grim determination to survive, but not hope. Hope was different. And yes, this was a dose of that fragile, precious feeling, by God.

Everybody worked harder, not because the guards were beating on people but because hope, in spite of that POW with the authoritative voice, was contagious. Men wanted to believe the Americans were on their way back, and thinking they might be made even dying prisoners stronger… for a little while.

When the shift ended, Peterson trudged out of the tunnel with as much spring in his step as a starving man with beriberi could have. He wolfed down his rice and nasty leaves with good appetite. But then, he was always hungry. By the time he ate, he knew the Americans had returned. Men too sick to labor-men who would die soon, in other words-had watched smoke rise in the southwest, from the direction of Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. Some of them had seen the bombers. Peterson couldn’t see anything; it had got dark. He hardly cared. His mind’s eye was in excellent working order.

The guards acted nervous at evening roll call, too. Naturally, they screwed up the count. Just as naturally, they took it out on the POWs. Peterson thought they killed a man when they knocked him down and kicked him, but he wasn’t sure.

Even sleep, normally a man’s most precious asset after food, went by the wayside tonight. Prisoners talked in low, excited voices, falling silent whenever a Jap stalked by. Their longings after an American victory came down to two things: steak and french fries. A few men talked about pussy, but only a few; most were too far gone to worry much about women one way or the other. Fantasies about food were much more immediately gratifying.

“Pussy’s more trouble than it’s worth,” Charlie Kaapu opined. That surprised Peterson; Charlie, of all people here, was in good enough shape to do a woman justice-or maybe even injustice, if he saw the chance.

“It’s trouble I’d like to have,” somebody else said wistfully.

The big, burly-by camp standards, anyhow- hapa -Hawaiian shook his head. “Why you think I ended up in this goddamn place, except for pussy?”

“Tell us the story again, Charlie,” Peterson said. It was better than most of the ones the prisoners told, and he hadn’t heard it so often, either.

Charlie Kaapu looked disgusted with himself. “This Jap major have a blond girlfriend.” He used some of the rhythms of the local pidgin without quite falling into it. Leering, he went on, “Blond girlfriend have good-looking boyfriend.” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. But then his face fell. “You go after nooky, you get stupid. I got stupid. I quarrel with the silly bitch, and she squeal on me. They grab me, they ship my ass up here. Ain’t you boys lucky they do that?”

He got jeered, as he must have known he would have. As poor Gordy had said, Peterson wished he’d had that much fun before getting sent to the Kalihi Valley. But the news of the day left him all the more determined to outlast the Japanese.

As he and everyone else in the camp discovered much too early the next morning, the news of the day left the guards all the more determined to make sure none of the prisoners there lived through it.

JOE CROSETTI LISTENED TO THE BRIEFING OFFICER. “All right, gentlemen,” the man said, and paused to swig at his milk. “We’ve given the Japs a left to the jaw and a right to the belly. We’ve sunk their carriers and we’ve walloped the rest of their surface ships and we’ve plastered their airfields on Oahu. They’re on the ropes and they’re wobbly, but they’re still on their feet. Now we go for the KO.”

Several fliers near Joe said, “Yeah!” A few others growled deep in their throats, a low animal noise he didn’t think they knew they were making. He had to listen to be sure he wasn’t making it himself.