Harry Turtledove - Days of Infamy

JOE CROSETTI’S INSTRUCTOR in essentials of naval service was a graying lieutenant named Larry Moore. He had a face as long as a basset hound’s, and normally about as doleful, too. When he came into the classroom wreathed in smiles one morning, Joe figured something was up.

And he was right. Lieutenant Moore said, “Gentlemen, yesterday the Grunion sent a Jap freighter to the bottom off the north coast of Kauai. We are starting to hit back at those slanty-eyed so-and-sos.”

A savage cheer-almost a growl-rose from the throats of the flying cadets. Joe joined in. Several young men clapped their hands. Orson Sharp raised his. When Moore pointed to him, he said, “Sir, are the Japs making any effort to bring in supplies for the civilians in Hawaii, or is everything they’re shipping in for their garrison?”

“That’s… not entirely obvious,” Moore said after a brief pause. “But that ship could have been carrying munitions or aircraft as readily as rice for soldiers or civilians.”

“Yes, sir.” As usual, Sharp was punctiliously polite. “Were there secondary explosions after the torpedo hit?”

“I don’t know one way or the other, so I can’t tell you,” the instructor answered. “If you’d be so kind, though, you might tell me why you’re wasting grief on a bunch of damn Japs.”

Most cadets, if challenged that way, would have lost their temper or backed down. Orson Sharp did neither. “Sir, I’ll wave bye-bye to all the Japs we send to the bottom. But there are an awful lot of hungry people in the Hawaiian Islands. If they’re going to get hungrier, I am sorry about that.”

Lieutenant Moore studied him. Sharp hadn’t been disrespectful or insubordinate in any way. He had an opinion, and he’d come out with it. If it wasn’t one the instructor happened to share… Well, was this still a free country or not? No, Joe realized, that wasn’t the right question. The country was still free. How freely anyone in the Navy could speak up was a whole different ballgame.

At last, Moore said, “Well, we’ll let it go this time, then.” He sounded like a governor pardoning a prisoner who probably didn’t deserve it. After another moment or two, Moore went on, “Where were we? Oh, yes. We were going to talk about yesterday’s quiz. About half of you didn’t know that a chief bosun can’t be tried by summary court-martial. Well, gentlemen, he can’t. A chief bosun is a warrant officer, which means the rules for ratings don’t apply to him.”

Bill Frank, who was sitting to Joe’s left while Sharp sat to his right, whispered, “Did you get that one?”

Joe nodded infinitesimally. “Yeah,” he whispered back. “How about you?”

“I think I blew it.” His roomie put a world of pathos into five almost inaudible words.

Lieutenant Moore went over the quiz item by item, concentrating on the ones a lot of cadets had missed. Along with courts and boards, essentials of naval service covered ranks and their duties, naval customs and usages, and all the endless formalities that let officers and ratings work together smoothly. Joe had seen a commander tromp all over a j.g. for something dumb the junior officer did one morning, then play bridge with him that night as if nothing had happened.

He didn’t fully understand how that worked. If anybody had been so bitingly rude to him, he would have wanted to brain the son of a bitch with a tire iron, not play cards with him. But the career Navy men seemed able to build a wall between what happened on duty and what happened off. Of course, they’d had years of practice. That kind of discipline didn’t come naturally. Without it, though, a lot of guys would have grabbed tire irons.

The instructor might have been reading his thoughts. “A ship is a very crowded place,” Moore said. “The sooner you start thinking like Navy men, the better you’ll fit in when you go to sea. We have round holes, gentlemen. People who insist on being square pegs don’t have an easy time of it.” He was looking at Orson Sharp as he said that.

When they got out of essentials of naval service, they had to hustle to make it to introductory navigation. Joe liked that least of the three academic courses in the program; it showed him he hadn’t paid enough attention in geometry and trig. But plenty of other cadets were struggling harder than he was.

“I hope you didn’t get Moore mad at you,” he said to Sharp as they hurried from one building to another.

“So do I, but I won’t lose any sleep over it,” the cadet from Utah replied. “I had a legitimate question.”

“I guess so,” Joe said.

Sharp’s eyes said Joe had just flunked a test. “Don’t you care what happens to the civilians in Hawaii? They’ve got a tough row to hoe.”

“Well, yeah,” Joe admitted. “But isn’t kicking the Japs out the best thing we can do for them? Odds are, whatever that freighter was carrying was going to the Jap Army or Navy, not to civilians.”

“Maybe. I suppose we have to hope so.” Sharp sounded no more convinced than Joe had a minute earlier. “They can’t let everybody starve, though.”

“Who says they can’t?” Joe retorted. “Look what the Nazis are doing in Russia.” Sharp winced but didn’t carry the argument any further, from which Joe concluded he’d won the point.

Any pride in his prowess disappeared in introduction to navigation. He butchered a problem-and he did it on the blackboard so everyone could see. “I’m afraid that answer is just exactly 180 degrees off, Mr. Crosetti,” the instructor said. “In other words, you couldn’t be wronger if you tried. Take your seat.” Ears blazing, Joe did. The instructor looked around. “Who sees where Mr. Crosetti went astray here?” Several people raised a hand. The instructor pointed. “Mr. Sharp.”

Orson Sharp solved the problem with what looked like offhand ease. He wasn’t having any trouble in the class. When he sat down, he didn’t act as if he’d just shown Joe up. Maybe he didn’t even feel that way. Joe knew he would have were their positions reversed. That made him resent his roomie even if Sharp didn’t resent him.

After the lecture, the instructor gave out more problems, these for pencil and paper. Joe thought he did pretty well on them. You probably did, but so what? he jeered at himself. Everybody already watched you show what a jerk you could be.

He breathed the heady-and chilly-air of freedom again when he got out of class. As far as he could tell, he’d never make it back to his carrier if he took off from one. But when he said that out loud, Orson Sharp shook his head. “I saw what you did. You took the tangent instead of the sine-just a little goof. You won’t do it with your neck on the line.”

“I hope not,” Joe said. Sharp perplexed him almost as much as his mangled navigation. Maybe the other cadet really wasn’t mad at him after all. Did that mark almost inhuman restraint or a genuinely good person?

The cadets’ other academic class was identification and recognition: how to tell bombers from fighters, cruisers from battleships, and Allied planes and ships from the ones that belonged to the Axis. They’d already had to learn the silhouettes of some new German and Japanese planes that hadn’t been known when they started the course.

Joe eyed blown-up photos and drawings with something less than his usual attention. He kept thinking about the question he’d asked himself between classes. How do you identify and recognize a genuinely good person? It wasn’t as if that were something he had to worry about every day. He knew too well that he didn’t fill the bill. Orson Sharp might.

Despite absentmindedness, he got out of the class without embarrassing himself again. Along with the other cadets, he trooped over to the cafeteria-now styled the galley in deference to the influx of Navy fliers-for lunch. The choice was between chicken a la king (which the cadets universally called chicken a la thing ) and creamed chipped beef on toast (which had an older and earthier nickname). Joe chose the chicken. Sharp filled his plate with the beef.