In War Times (9 page)
Authors: Kathleen Ann Goonan
Tags: #Fiction, #Alternative History, #Science Fiction, #General
Bebop released the place to which Sam directed his missives to Keenan, a “some-when” in which he still lived in the loops of time and space that Hadntz’s paper seemed to reveal, a place where he and Keenan might be different than they had been here, where they might not even have the same common memories they’d once had, and yet would somehow be, ineluctably, Keenan and Sam, like a tune that could be played an infinite number of ways and still retain its identity. Modern music was jazz, yes, but jazz assuredly made quite new, something so new and different that, when contrasted to previous musical forms, a new understanding of the nature of time would be.
And modern music seemed to have some kind of relationship with the cutting-edge information about physics he’d received in Washington and in Aberdeen, and a relationship with the technological children of that information, the SCR-584 radar and the M-9 Director. With radar, the M-9
heard
something that was previously ephemeral, just as these creators of modern jazz
heard
something that had always been there, but which could only be surmised with the mind and targeted with blindingly fast fingering, so swiftly that a new universe was called into being for the barest instant before vanishing.
Sure, the SCR-584 was new, and powerful. But Sam had to wonder what kind of weapons their enemies might be developing. Japan had used poison gas in China in the late thirties; Germany was using their own form of radar to send their bombers to London. When would their enemies be in possession of new and even more powerful technologies and weapons?
That was the other side of “making it new.”
New was not always good. It was a risk. In modern music, it was release, the learning of a radical new language that pushed the known to unexpected territory, changing, it seemed to Sam, his very brain in the process.
But sometimes the new could be a deadly surprise.
In the world of physicists, ordnance testers, and musicians, there was no division between day and night. So the expedition to the M-9 testing was scheduled for four in the morning, much to Wink’s disgust. The hour was perfect for music, in his opinion, but not much else.
They and six others who had attended Bitts’s lectures boarded a bus and dozed for half an hour while being transported to the test site.
Sam stumbled from the bus into the frigid Aberdeen night and followed the others to a detached truck trailer on a hill, braced on all sides, its large doors flung open so that everyone could see inside.
They were instructed to fold back the hinged roof; after it was open to the sky one of them cranked up a parabolic dish, which was the radio set, so that it extended above the roof.
In turn, they moved the M-9 Director, the power generator, (which contained the cavity magnetron), and the tracking unit out of the truck, connected them with wires, and set up a folding chair next to each. Bitts turned the dial that powered the thing; the two banks of technology at the forward part of the truck lit, blinking wildly, then settled to a steady hum. And it was ready to go.
Ready to find, track, aim, and fire at a rapidly moving target. It was connected to a bank of four 90mm antiaircraft guns arranged as a battery, but not loaded with shells. That would have been done by one of the teams, were they in a battle.
After twenty minutes and a cigarette for everyone, it was still ready to go. The major accompanying them looked at his watch, at Bitts, and back at his watch.
The dials jumped to life. Bitts said, “Late start this morning. Gentlemen, you are seeing the tracking, on that screen, of your morning Air Force defense run.”
One of them was manning the M-9, but the rest simply watched as, just as Bitts had told them would happen, the four guns rotated in unison toward the drone of propellers.
“It followed those goddamned planes,” remarked one of Sam’s colleagues on the way back, “like clockwork.”
“And no fuse to calculate and worry about cutting right,” said another. “Completely fucking automatic.”
Sam leaned his head against the cold glass of the bus window and began to think about trajectories and then was dreaming about a trajectory of time in which Keenan was downtown in Honolulu the morning of the attack, on shore leave, and thus still lived.
They were in Minton’s, and it was around midnight. Immersed in a sea of fast-moving thought meshed to notes streaming from the stage, notes that propelled his own thoughts about time and space and electricity in vast, dissonant leaps, Sam saw how Hadntz’s device meshed with consciousness, linked inner and outer, large and small, how the totality changed with only a slight dissonance, how new thought, new paths, could suddenly appear, how time flowed and linked and grew, folded back into itself, and grew again. The multidimensional vision appeared quite suddenly, seemingly thrown up by the power of the music, the sheer concentrated force of thought made physical, transmuted to pulses of sound, of focused energy. The notes, time itself, were the bare lineaments of thought, forever falling into new configurations…
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” said Sam, considering whether to return the rude shove on his shoulder or employ a more friendly method of dealing with whoever kept nudging him.
“Soldier.”
“Uh—sir?” Two MP’s hovered over them.
One of them seized Sam by the collar, pulled him out of his chair, and spun him around. “You’re off-limits.”
Wink was out of his chair now, addressing the shorter one. “You’re making a mistake. We are on a special—”
“Can it,” said the other MP. “You’re coming with us.” Minton approached. “Take it outside.”
“You guys have had it,” said one MP, when they emerged on One hundred-eighteenth Street.
“We’ll see,” said Wink, and Sam wished that he’d shut up.
It took them two days to arrive in the CO’s office, and they passed those days in various jails, brigs, and holding tanks.
In the meantime, Sam gave much thought to making things new. “The notes are there; they exist. It’s just a matter of using them in a new way. A new arrangement of vibrations. But you have to think about it in a different way first. You have to throw away the old framework.”
Bribes from their dwindling cash supply allowed them to keep their instruments, and they worked out several new arrangements while in various cells, winning applause from some and comments related to serious hangovers from others. With each attempt, Sam felt the effort, the stretch, resonate back into him, felt it changing what he thought, and what he thought he knew, bouncing off some imagined future and adjusting, as he did when he did something as simple as deciding whether or not to open a window. Throw that all away too, he thought. Abandon the old framework.
“My mother used to take me to the art museums in New York because the old man was too busy to go with her,” said Wink. They’d entertained a group of drunk soldiers to great effect in their last holding tank, but presently they were locked up right on the Proving Grounds, with its comfortingly familiar din of ordnance testing punctuating their musical forays with bebop-like randomness. “I saw a lot of astonishing things. They all seemed to have something to do with how machines were affecting humanity, or how we were moving into new ways of thinking about ourselves. I remember one of those fellows, Kandinsky. He’s Russian.
“I was just a kid, and his stuff seemed to be all about speed, about velocity. I mean, these guys say that their music is modern music, and this art was modern art, and this concept that we’re working on with in the M-9, this technical advancement, is a modern concept. Things have changed so much. A hundred years, no,
sixty
years ago, we didn’t have telephones, electricity, automobiles. We’re beginning to be able to use things that are invisible to our eye, but which can be proved to exist. What we’re doing is taking the elements of physics, finding out new properties, using them in new ways like Kandinsky did with color and like Diz and Bird do with sound. The next time we go to the city—”
“If we ever go anywhere again—”
“We can find some Kandinsky. There’s a connection. All this stuff is coming from the same place. Funny…I never really thought about it before…”
Sam suddenly resolved to tell Wink about Hadntz. “Listen—”
“All right, you wretches.” An MP appeared at the door. They were ushered from their cell, and Sam realized that he still didn’t know exactly how to tell Wink about Hadntz.
The CO did not greet them, and did not ask them to sit, as he usually did. He continued writing and said, “You two are in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
Wink said, “Sir, we are just doing our part for the war effort.”
“So I heard.” He continued writing. “Men have been court-martialed for less.”
Sam thought of Keenan, of how disappointed he would be.
“Sir, I hardly think—” began Wink.
“Don’t bother.” He finally stopped writing and handed each of them some papers.
“What?” asked Sam after glancing at his. “These are orders to ship out.”
“We’re in charge of hundreds of thousands of tons of ordnance?” asked Wink. “Just we two?”
“Had you going there for a minute, didn’t I?” asked the CO. “The best way to keep you out of trouble is to give you plenty to do. And a strong word of advice—‘special’ is not a word you should throw around lightly in the future, particularly regarding yourselves.” He looked down at his papers. “Also, thanks to that friend of yours, you are now officially warrant officers.”
“What friend?” asked Sam, completely puzzled.
“A Major Elegante.”
“Major—” Sam frowned, trying to recall who Elegante might be.
“You know this guy?” asked Wink.
“The name sounds familiar, but…” suddenly he remembered the silent blond officer, and kept quiet.
She was a direct link to Hadntz. What if Elegante really knew what Hadntz was doing?
Elegante, and others in the Army?
The thought chilled him.
The CO continued. “This will give you a lot of leeway in terms of how you spend your time. God knows why, but once you start to try and understand the Army you’re lost, so don’t even try. No one but you and a few commissioned officers will know about this status. Keep it that way. To everyone else you shall be and you shall act like staff sergeants, subject to all kinds of shit to which you will not object. Savvy? Now get out of here.”
Nobody ever escaped the 610th to better themselves; if you were able to strike a deal with anyone the 610th would declare you “essential” and that would be the end of that. Being on “TD” (temporary duty) at Aberdeen, I was, however temporarily, under the command of my “provisional company” captain who couldn’t care less where I went when I left APG.
Hearing that the Air Force was desperate for engineering officers, and thinking that two and one-half years of college would fill the bill, I met with an Air Force rep and he confirmed that I had the necessary education, and if I could pass their physical (with glasses!) they would be glad to have me. So I rushed to the clinic to get fitted for hi-power glasses, crossed my fingers, and held my breath.
All for nothing. My new liberating glasses were handed to me at the ceremony where they handed out our graduation certificates and our travel orders. I was no longer in alien hands; I was, as of this instant, back in the tender hands of my very own 610th. And not even a delay enroute!
Passage to War
T
HE
QUEEN ELIZABETH WAS
1,100 feet long, the sister ship of the
Queen Mary
but not identical, about sixty feet longer. Normal trade for a ship of the
QE’s
size was 1,500 passengers. When I crossed there were 17,500 aboard.
The ship had permanent gunners for one shift, then would draft sub-gunners from the passenger list, which was mostly military. We got a certain amount of dry training, loading and unloading, so if we came under attack by airplane or submarine whoever was on the guns could return fire. The regular gunners would show up as soon as they could make it; we’d stand by as fill-ins if a gunner got hit.
Our gunner’s pass got us on deck any time of day or night. The regular passengers were not allowed on deck at night, nor in daytime if we were under attack.
Being January, it was a cold, rough trip. The
QE
veered over the north Atlantic. We ran about thirty-six knots, top speed, all the time and changed course every thirty seconds at random, and so covered a lot of ocean. The direct travel time would have been on the order of three and a half days but we spent five.
Our stateroom was the cinema, which had a high ceiling. The bunks, stacked twelve high, were maybe eighteen or twenty-four inches apart; the guy above you was right in your face. They were made of pipes with a grommeted canvas fly tied between them. Each soldier’s space was two and a half feet wide and six and a half feet long. There was no padding, sheets, or blankets. You could wiggle around and get the canvas to approximate your shape fairly comfortably.
I took a look, decided I was going to sleep in the top bunk, and hoisted up my duffel bag. Up above was a wooden rack where everyone’s duffel bag went.
The main dining room was not open to us as part of the crew. Ours was a crew dining room we occupied for fifteen to twenty minutes. It was a hidey-hole with a seven-foot ceiling and long board tables with tip-down stools.
As we had a crew pass to get where we wanted to go we decided that the main dining room was the place to eat. We’d go up there about the time the last people popped into line so we wouldn’t have to wait.
One day we arrived there just after they shut the door. We hammered on it and the main purser opened it. He was a Brit, and, next to the captain, a top dog.
He looked us up and down very coolly and described to us exactly where we were allowed to eat. Without raising his voice he tore us into little pieces and turned us out with an invitation not to try it again.
After that if we missed the open door we went back down to the crew mess.
It was two in the morning and on deck, in the middle of the north Atlantic, the temperature was well below freezing. Sam pulled his collar up and stomped his feet to keep them warm. He was on watch next to the fantail six-inch gun, watching white-caps glint in the moonlight like faint chimeras, buffeted by gusts of wind fresh off the icebergs they’d recently passed. Removing his gloves, he clamped them beneath one arm and with numbed fingers tied his earflaps beneath his chin before putting the gloves on again.
