Weapons of choice

And it was early evening before Moose left the tent again, giving Davidson a chance to tear open the brown paper parcel. He found a couple of shirts inside, and two pairs of socks. Wrapped up in one pair was an IOU from Big Itchy for six thousand dollars, payable when next they met.

A grin as big as the Grand Canyon broke out on Slim Jim's face. He could almost feel that money in the tips of his fingers. A lot of guys would have wanted it right there with them in the cot, thinking they could keep it safe that way. But Slim Jim Davidson knew his dough was more secure locked up in the strongbox beneath Big Itchy's desk. Any sticky fingers straying near the combination lock were liable to get themselves hacked off with a machete.

There was a note with the IOU.

"Got any more ideas?"

The two men sat in the shaded portico that ran around the hospital, sipping at iced water and squinting into the glare of the midday sun. Eddie Mohr was in far better shape than Lieutenant Commander Evans. The funny little gizmo they'd stuck on the back of his neck seemed to block all the pain he should have been feeling from his cracked skull and stitched-up wounds. But he found that he still got dizzy if he had to walk very far. Evans had it tougher. His ruined arm was encased in one of those fat, blow-up sausages and he told Mohr that most of his arm wasn't even his anymore. They'd grown it in a test tube.

"Musta been a big fucking tube, sir," said Mohr.

"More of a vat, they told me," said Evans.

The Astoria's senior enlisted man shook his head at the idea. Eddie Mohr had spent a good part of his life on the floor of a slaughterhouse. He wasn't a squeamish guy, but the idea of growing your own meat in a glass bowl made him feel distinctly giddy. Still, there were friends of his alive because of it, and because they'd been cracked open and fitted with mechanical hearts, and plastic bones, and Christ only knew what else.

Rumor had it that one guy off the Hornet was sporting a brand-new dick. Two inches longer than his old one!

Mohr wondered if you could put a request in for that sort of thing.

Other casualties meandered slowly about the grounds under their own power, or were pushed about in wheelchairs by nurses. The sun was so fierce it hurt to look at their white uniforms, unless you were wearing sunglasses. It seemed that almost everyone from the future did just that, even indoors. It was just another of the many things about them that made Eddie Mohr's head spin.

He felt himself dozing off, nodding forward in his cane chair, until Evans's voice cut through his torpor.

"Do you hear anything about Captain Anderson?" he asked.

The topic had hung between them like an unspoken curse, and Mohr found himself looking for eavesdroppers before he replied. He'd learned that not everyone appreciated or understood his respect for the late commander of the Leyte Gulf. In fact, there'd been some ugliness over it.

He leaned over to Evans and lowered his voice. "The way I hear it, they collected enough evidence at the scene to nail whoever done it, if they can figure out whoever done it."

Evans crinkled his brow with the effort of trying to understand as Mohr continued.

"Doc Wassman, remember her? She tells me they can collect a sample of a guy's… uh, stuff. His come. And they can test it to show exactly who left it behind."

"She was raped, then?"

Mohr's features contorted with distaste.

"Oh yeah. There's a lot of bullshit talk about this Miyazaki guy. How he might have fucked her before they got waxed. But Wassman says that's just crap. They can tell, because of the come. It ain't his. In fact," he muttered, drawing even closer, "it was a coupla guys."

Evans nodded slowly. "But they don't know who?"

Mohr waited while a man who was seemingly wrapped from head to toe in white gauze bandages was wheeled past. When they were alone again he said, "They know it wasn't one of their guys. They can tell from the DMA."

"DMA?"

"It's a like a fingerprint for the come," whispered Mohr.

Evans took that in without much reaction. He stared at the bright green tube around his arm for a few seconds.

"So what happened?" he said at last.

Mohr shrugged.

"Dunno. Anderson and the Jap were on shore. She'd taken over his ship with a bunch of other officers from the Gulf. Americans. The Japs lost a lot of their top guys when a shell hit the bridge. Captain Anderson and this Miyazaki were probably just walking along talking things through, you know, admin stuff, when they got hit."

Evans sighed. He suddenly seemed very tired.

"What a mess."

"Yeah, it's a fucking pity," said Mohr. "I thought that dame was all right, you know. A good captain."

He said it tentatively, as if expecting an argument. But Evans simply bobbed his head up and down.

"Yeah. She was okay."

28

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, 1411 HOURS, 9 JUNE 1942