Oh yeah. These people were pulling the same stunt that Hasenpfeffer pulled in his office. Only they did it on an everyday basis!
“Yeah. Yeah. I see. Leftenant, you have a fine ship. A lot of the equipment has familiar manufacturers’ name tags, but I’ve never seen anything like her. Where was she built?”
“Right here, sir, in that dry dock.”
“All six of them?”
“Well, not exactly, sir. I mean we only had to build her once, of course, and then refit her each time she came back.”
Oh. Whoopee. Shit.
“Yeah, thanks for the tour, Leftenant. I’d probably think of some more questions only my head’s hurting. Barb! Gather up the girls! Let’s go sailboating!”
We met Ian’s party by the yachts, and he was babbling on about a building big enough to drive a container ship into, and these hoists that ran on variable tracks on the ceiling that unloaded and reloaded the thing in a half hour. I wasn’t interested.
“Hey, you girls! Get busy casting off the scuppers and shivering the bowlines and doing all that other nautical stuff to make this thing go!” I went down into a spartan cabin to rub my temples and let this latest set of data get digested.
Soon, one of the women came in and started rubbing my neck and shoulders, which felt delicious. Before long, she was rubbing me all over. I found out that her name was Kathy. She was my librarian with her hair fixed differently and without her phony horn-rimmed glasses. We enjoyed each other.
I was back on deck in time to wave at the Hotspur as she went by.
There was a complicated looking radio aboard. “I want to talk to Leftennnt Fitzsimmon. Any of you girls know how to work this thing?”
Tammy did, and Fitzsimmon was on the air within seconds. At the same time the Hotspur made a fast “U” turn.
“Yes, sir. Can we be of assistance?”
“No problems, Leftenant. I just thought of another question.”
The gunboat made another about-face. “Of course, sir.”
“The five times your ship “came back,” was it damaged? Shot up, I mean.”
“I really couldn’t tell you, sir. I wasn’t there at the time, and it’s not the sort of thing that they’d tell a bloke about. Rather like telling him when he’s going to die, what? Simply not done. Anything else I can help you with?”
“Yes. Just what is it that you do out there for sixteen hours a day?”
“It’s mostly a matter of dashing about and staring at empty ocean, sir. About every fifth day we come on a fisherman inside the ten-mile limit. At least they say they’re just fishermen. Just a matter of escorting them back out, usually. Once we assisted the Brazilian Navy in a rescue job. It’s been pretty boring since the submarines stopped coming.”
“Submarines, you say?”
“Yes, sir. Used to be scads of them. American, Russian, French, British—even a Chinaman, once. Lots of chaps were curious about what we were doing out here.”
“Right. Just what are we doing out here?”
“I’m out here patrolling the ten-mile limit, sir. Couldn’t rightly say about the rest.”
“Huh. Okay. What did you do about the subs?”
“At first, we couldn’t do much at all but stay on top of them and drop the odd hand grenade now and then to let them know we still cared, sir. Then one of the technical boffins came up with a variation on our homing depth charges. It has a magnetic grapple that clamps onto the beggar’s hull. Then it has an underwater speaker and a tape recorder that says—I think I can recite it—’I am a five-hundred-pound bomb. You are violating the territorial sovereignty of the State of San Sebastian. If you depart immediately, I will detach at the ten-mile limit. If you continue in your violation, I will detonate in sixty seconds. I repeat . . . ‘ It worked wonders, sir, even if the equipment took up all the available room, and there was none left for a bomb. None of the blighters saw fit to call our bluff, so it was jolly well effective!”
Years later, I found out that the real reason that the various world powers stopped sending subs around was that satellites and U-2 style aircraft could do a better job of keeping an eye on us, and do it cheaper. Ian and I were pretty much unaware of the fact that a lot of very powerful people were very interested in what we were doing.
“Lovely,” I said. “But is it a good idea to go around transmitting stuff like that unencrypted on the radio?”
“We’re not exactly transmitting, sir. We have our ways. Any other questions, sir?”
“Uh, no. Thank you.”
I looked suspiciously at the radio. It had a big, complicated face, but it was only about two inches thick. Not much room for batteries, and the yacht was strictly sail powered. There wasn’t even a small auxiliary engine. Checking further, I found no antenna leads and no power wires leading into the thing. It was completely self-contained. I might not know much about boats, but I know quite a bit about communications equipment. I got out my Swiss Army knife and dismantled the “radio.”
The silly thing had no transmitter section at all! Instead, it had a pair of small tape decks! Bloody be damned tape decks! I had been talking to a God damn tape deck! I stared at this for maybe ten minutes before I recognized two simple timers. Daylight slowly dawned in the swamp. If Fitzsimmon had a pair of tape decks on his boat, and he talked to it the same way I did, and then if somebody sent both “transmit” tapes back in time to before we both left port and then switched tapes, so my old “transmit” tape was his new “receive” tape, and vice versa, then we’d both hear what the other had to say, just as if we’d been connected by radio! Damn.
I put the set back together and called up the gunboat.
“Fitzsimmon, I’ve just inspected the ‘radio.’ Question: What happens if the Hotspur is going to sink?”
“Well, in my case, sir, I have a set of normal if less secure communications gear as a backup. We mostly use it to talk to foreign ships. In your case, if you have problems of any kind, just have one of your girls press her red button and help will be on the way. Ah, I’ve just received the most atrocious communication from your lovely majordomo, and I think I would be wise to sign off. Cheerio!”
Another set of data to muddle out!
CHAPTER TWENTY
Two New Bodies
I looked back to check out the competition. Ian had insisted on commanding his own yacht, so he still wasn’t out of the harbor. We had to “hove to” for an hour until he caught up. It was noon, so Mary broke out lunch—salami sandwiches and Budweiser beer. Right after that, and completely without encouragement, the girls stripped to the buff to sun themselves. None of them had bathing suit marks on their suntans, so it apparently wasn’t entirely for my benefit. I motioned Barb to come with me into the cabin, and I caught a few glances of envy directed at her from the crew.
After only a day and a half here, I was beginning to take this as part of the ordinary course of events. It’s remarkable how adaptable the human organism is.
But just then, I didn’t want her for sex.
“Okay, Barb. Are you ready to ‘fess up?”
“About what?”
“For starters, about why I need nine secretaries when you people go zipping to last Thursday as often as an American housewife goes to the grocery store.”
“I am going to gouge Leftenant Fitzsimmon’s eyes out.”
“Well, from what I hear, your doctors could put them back.”
“Then I’ll take a try at his gonads!”
“Spilled a few beans, did he? Answer my question.”
“Tom, you must understand that there was a lot of social pressure—from the women, I mean. A lot of them wanted the chance to . . . to meet you. Your culture uses secretaries and servants, doesn’t it? It . . . it seemed the natural thing to do.”
“Hah! So you admit that you’re from a different culture!”
“You knew that already.”
“Yes, but I still don’t know which one. Spill.”
“I’m not allowed to answer that.”
“Then who is?”
“I can’t answer that either.”
“So, what do I have to do to get the truth out of you? Slap you around?”
“You can if you want to. No one will stop you, Tom.”
Shit. She called my bluff. I couldn’t hit a woman, even if she did deserve it, and Barb hadn’t gone nearly that far, yet.
“Well, okay. Now what’s this about your culture not having any children?”