Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

Or maybe it was the heads that did them in. They had no partitions. You did your business sitting next to somebody else who was doing his business, and if what you saw and heard and smelled put you off your stride, you got more and more constipated. The pharmacist's mates did a booming-so to speak-business in castor oil.

The Lamson had five three-inch guns. They hadn't been much back when she was built, and they were only popguns by today's standards. But they were big enough to give the crew practice at loading, firing, and shooting real artillery pieces.

An ensign with peach fuzz on his cheeks asked, "What would you do, men, if we were attacked by a British cruiser?"

Get blown to hell and gone, George thought, but that probably wasn't what the baby-faced officer wanted to hear. Morrie Fishbein said, "Launch torpedoes, sir. They'd be our best chance against anything that outgunned us by so much."

The ensign frowned. That was a good answer, but not the one he'd been looking for. He said, "But how would you fight back with our guns?"

"Shoot like hell and hope for the best, sir," Fishbein answered. "One hit from a six-inch gun and we're scrap iron anyway." He was right there, too. Destroyers weren't armored against shellfire. They couldn't be; they depended on speed instead. Armor added weight and would have slowed them down.

After that, the ensign asked fewer questions.

George did everything at the Lamson's guns: he jerked shells, loaded, handled the altitude and azimuth screws, and finally commanded the piece. If he served a gun once he was assigned to his own ship, he knew he would start as a shell jerker. That was low man on the totem pole. He didn't care. As long as that gun was shooting at the Confederates-or the British, or the French, or the Japanese-he didn't care at all.

Some of the men on the Lamson got dreadfully seasick. The waves did pick her up and toss her around a good deal. That fresh-faced ensign turned almost as green as the Atlantic. George took the destroyer's motion in stride. Whatever the ocean did to her, it wasn't a patch on a fishing boat riding out a storm. Once you'd been through that, nothing else on the ocean would faze you… unless you were the luckless sort who never did find his sea legs. In that case, the Navy-or at least a warship-was a ghastly mistake.

There were men who kissed the dirty, splintery planks of the wharf when the Lamson got back to port in Providence. Nobody laughed at them. Everyone had been through enough to feel There but for the grace of God go I. If the grace of God didn't decide who made a good sailor and who didn't, George couldn't imagine what would.

As usual, the land seemed to reel when he came ashore. He was used to a constantly shifting surface under his feet; one that stayed in place felt wrong. So did a horizon that failed to roll and pitch. He knew the abnormalities would subside in a little while, which made them no less strange while they were going on.

Routine returned, including close-order drill. George endured it, waiting for his next cruise. The Navy had more nonsense in it than he'd expected when he put on the uniform. Once he was at sea, though, most of it went away. And that was what really mattered.

These days, cops with submachine guns patrolled the bus stop where blacks in the Terry went off to Augusta's war plants. They made sure nobody could repeat the atrocity that had scarred the colored part of town. Scipio didn't care. He went a couple of blocks out of his way every day so he didn't have to walk past that bus stop.

He knew avoiding it might not save him. There weren't enough cops in Augusta to examine every automobile in the Terry, let alone every one in the whole town. And a bomb didn't have to hide inside an auto. A creative terrorist had plenty of other choices.

Fewer whites joked about his penguin suit as he walked to the Huntsman's Lodge. Fewer joked at all. Hard suspicion filled most of the glances he got. His passbook got checked two or three times in the trip up to the restaurant.

Bathsheba said the same thing happened to her when she went to clean houses. More and more, whites in Augusta didn't want Negroes coming out of the Terry at all unless they rode on those buses.

Scipio wondered what the whites thought they would do if they started excluding waiters and cleaners and barbers and others who served them and made their lives easier and more comfortable. Would they start waiting on one another? He couldn't believe it. In the Confederate States, that was nigger work. The whole point of being a white in the CSA was that you didn't have to do nigger work. All whites were equal, above all blacks. Why else had the Confederate States seceded, if not to preserve that principle?

He slipped into the Huntsman's Lodge with a sigh of relief. As long as his shift lasted, everything would probably be all right. He knew his role here. He knew what to expect from his boss and the cooks and the other waiters and the customers. They wouldn't be wondering if he aimed to blow the place to hell and gone. The most they'd worry about was whether the steak they'd ordered rare would come back medium-rare. They'd look down their noses at him, but in a familiar way.

"Hello, Xerxes," Jerry Dover said when he came in. "You know a colored fella about your age named Aurelius? He said you did."

"Yes, suh, I knows Aurelius," Scipio answered. "How come you knows he?"

"He's looking for work here. Place he was at's closing down."

"Do Jesus! John Oglethorpe's place closin' down?" Scipio said in altogether unfeigned dismay. "He give me my first job waitin' tables in dis town-alongside Aurelius-when I come here durin' de las' war. What fo' he closin' down?"

"Got somethin' wrong with his ticker-he's not strong enough to keep the place open any more," Dover answered. "Too damn bad-I know he's been here a long time. This Aurelius knows his stuff, then?"

"Oh, yes, suh," Scipio said at once. "I reckon you knows about Oglethorpe's. Ain't no fancy place-just a diner. But Aurelius, he always put out de right forks an' spoons, an' he put dey where dey goes. I walk in dere lookin' for work, he check me on dat first thing."

He wondered if he'd just talked too much. Jerry Dover might ask him where he'd learned such things, if not at Oglethorpe's. On the other hand, Dover already knew Anne Colleton claimed he'd worked for her. If the restaurant manager had an ounce of sense, he knew that claim was true, too. He'd protected Scipio, but for the restaurant's sake more than the Negro's. And now Anne was dead. Scipio still found that hard to believe.

All Dover did ask was, "You reckon he can do the job?" That didn't just mean keeping the customers happy and knowing which fork went where. It meant showing up on time every day no matter what. It meant not making yourself intolerable to the cooks. It meant a good many other things, too, but those were the big ones.

Scipio nodded without hesitation. "Yes, suh. He do it. Dat man don't give you no trouble, not fo' nothin'."

"All right, then. I expect I'll take him on. We both know that Marius fella isn't working out."

This time, Scipio's nod was reluctant. Marius meant well. Scipio was convinced of that. But he also knew which road good intentions paved. The young waiter would come in late, and without letting Dover know ahead of time he'd be late. He was clumsy, and the cooks ragged him because of it. Like any cooks, the ones here were merciless when they scented weakness. And Marius couldn't take ribbing, and he was no damn good at giving it back.

Jerry Dover clapped Scipio on the back. "Don't worry about it. You're not the one who's going to can his ass. I am." He laughed. "And he'll probably end up in a war plant two days after I do it. Getting fired might be the best thing that ever happens to him."