Free Days of Infamy by Harry Turtledove Page B

bleeding. Then, almost stabbing himself in the process, he gave the man a morphine injection. The wounded soldier sighed as the drug began to take hold.
    Next to him, a sergeant was using a bayonet to cut another wounded man’s throat. Considering what the bomb had left of the young man, Armitage only nodded. The sergeant was doing him a favor.
    After plunging the bayonet into the ground three or four times to clean it, the sergeant looked over to him. “How the hell are we supposed to get to our deployment area now, sir?” he asked.
    The column was an abbatoir. Trucks burned. Others lay on their side or upside down. Guns had been flipped about like jackstraws. “Sergeant, I’ll be damned if I can tell you,” Fletch answered. “Truth is, I’ve been too busy trying to stay alive the last few minutes to care about anything else.”
    â€œYeah,” the noncom said. “But we better start caring PDQ, don’t you think?”
    Fletch looked around again. He saw ruin and wreckage and slaughter. He looked up to the sky. He didn’t see any more Japanese planes, for which he heartily thanked God. But that didn’t mean the bastards with the meatballs wouldn’t come back again. He also didn’t see any American planes. That didn’t surprise him. The Japs must have swept them away like kids in second grade erasing a blackboard. How the hell was his force supposed to do anything if the Japs could hit it from above whenever they pleased?
    He had no idea, none in the whole wide world. But he managed a nod he hoped wasn’t too downhearted. “Yeah, Sergeant. You’re right. We’ve got to try.”
    J IRO T AKAHASHI TOOK the Oshima Maru out on Sunday just like any other day. The idea of the Sabbath meant nothing to him. The Sabbath was for haoles , who’d invented the silly notion. As far as he was concerned, work was work, and one day as good for it as another.
    Maybe Hiroshi and Kenzo had different ideas. If his sons did, they’d never had the nerve to say anything about them. If he’d sent them out in the sampan while he stayed home and slept, they might have. As things were, his example pulled them along. If he was willing—even eager—to get out of bed before sunrise and head for Kewalo Basin, how could they tell him they didn’t want to? They couldn’t. They hadn’t yet, anyhow.
    Some sampans were coming in even as the Oshima Maru put to sea. A few men went fishing by night, trailing lights in the water to lure nehus and the tuna that fed on them. They were first to market with their catch, and so got good prices. But their expenses were higher, too—Jiro didn’t have to worry about a generator or the fuel to run it or light bulbs. The work was harder at night, too, though that fazed him much less than the extra cost did.
    He set a tub of minnows down in the bottom of the sampan. A fairy tern swooped down to try to steal some of the little fish. He waved his hat. The white bird with the big black eyes flew off toward Waikiki.
    â€œWaste time, bird!” Hiroshi said. Kenzo laughed. Jiro only shrugged. He got the Oshima Maru ’s engine going. The sampan shook and thudded with the diesel’s vibration. Out to sea they went. The sky had just started turning pale yellow, out there beyond Diamond Head. Pink would follow, and then the sun.
    Today, he got out early enough to suit him. He’d cleared the defensive sea area well before sunrise. Today, other old-school fishermen would be complaining about their lazy, good-for-nothing sons. Not even Jiro could find anything wrong with his boys this morning. They’d done everything he wanted, and done it in good time, too.
    He didn’t tell them so. He didn’t want them getting swelled heads. Besides, why should he praise them for merely doing what they were supposed to do? If he did, then they’d want praise for every little thing. They’d expect it,