To Honor You Call Us (35 page)

Max chuckled.  “I suppose it does.  I never thought about it like that.  That saying is likely one of those things you need to take figuratively, and—once you do that—not think about it very much afterwards.  Some things just don’t bear close examination, you know.  They’re like those French paintings made of countless little colored dots instead of brush strokes.  If you look at them too closely, you don’t have a painting any more, just a great many tiny specks of paint.”

“There is certainly a lesson in that,” said the doctor.  “And it is a lesson from which I might draw a great deal of profit.  I have something of a tendency to over-examine things.”

“Really?”  Max said, with barely a trace of sarcasm.  “I hadn’t noticed.  Whether the saying we have about it makes a great deal of sense or not, you can be sure that the Navy is friendly to all faiths.  If you ever need to know which way Mecca lies, feel free to call anyone in Navigation, as I know you have difficulty with such things.”

“It is not a problem.  Years ago a Muslim navigator invented this device.”  He stood up and walked over to a bookshelf from which he retrieved a cube, about 80 millimeters on a side.  The cube was black through and through except for a small greenish blue arrow that seemed to float in the cube’s center.  As the doctor rotated the cube in his hand, the orientation of the arrow remained constant, always pointing generally aft and slightly toward the lower deck.  “As long as the arrow is illuminated, it is pointing toward Earth, and Mecca.  If the system has a fault, the arrow ceases to be visible.  They are lightweight, discrete, interface automatically with virtually every human computer network, and practically every Muslim who leaves Earth has at least one.”

Sahin handed it to Max, who turned it over in his hands.  “Ingenious.  Looks like it runs off a Type 11 Power Cell, just like a percom, probably uses one of the standard eight or twelve channel narrow band transceivers that we put in our simpler wireless devices—that would cover just about every kind of network but still use no power worth speaking of.  Very elegant design.  I’m impressed.  The man was in the Navy, wasn’t he?”

“Indeed he was.  Still is.  I suspect you have heard of him.  Admiral Ganiyev?”

“’Go Get-Em’ Ganiyev?  I thought he was Russian.”

”There are Russian Muslims, but I believe his ancestors are from Uzbekistan.”

“I served under him for a year.  I was in the Tactical Back Room when he was Captain of the Battleship
Suffolk
.  The man has the loudest voice in the Navy.”

“I thought you held that distinction, Captain.”

“Not hardly.  And, when we’re here, you can call me ‘Max,’ you know.  In any event, you’re certainly not unique in the matter of your faith here.  That would be a hard thing to do, as we have all kinds in the Navy.”  He smiled broadly at a recollection.  “When I commanded a PC-4 something like five, no six, years ago, I had a man under my command who had no fewer than six wives.”

“Six!  How can that be?  I thought that plural marriage was outlawed in the Union.”

“That is a common misconception.  It
was
outlawed under the old Confederation, which—as you remember—had a habit of passing all sorts of intrusive, busybody legislation telling people how to live their lives and interfering in the member worlds’ internal affairs.  That’s one of the many reasons it fell in the Revolt of the Estates seventy or so years ago.  Anyway, marriages to multiple partners are against local, planetary law on virtually every world in the Union, but Union statute does not prohibit it.  So, and this is not widely known at all, there are half a dozen or so Union worlds where it is permitted and one or two where it is even considered normal.  This man came from some out of the way planet—I can’t remember the name off the top of my head—where such things are permitted.  Planet was settled by people who subscribe to some modern splinter Jewish sect, totally repudiated by all mainstream Jews you understand, that believes since the old Hebrew Patriarchs like Abraham and that crowd had wives and wives and more wives, so should they.  The man on my crew, his name is Moshe Hirschman, Able Spacer First, had something like twenty-four children back then.  Probably up to thirty or more by now.”

“However could a man afford to support such a brood on a Navy salary?”

“It’s actually rather easier for a Navy man to do this sort of thing than a civilian.  His wives and children all get totally free medical and dental care, not to mention a housing and dependent allowance that is scaled to the size of his family.  With all those dependents, his pay is about the same as mine.  But, it isn’t paying for that brood that would be the concern, in any event.”

“What would be the concern, then?” asked Sahin.

“I’ve never been able to get along for more than a matter of a few weeks with one woman, much less six,” Max said.  “I honestly don’t get how a man could do it.”

“I see your point.  That has never been something at which I have ever been very successful myself.  There are things about them that I simply cannot seem to fathom and I wonder if I ever will.”

“I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one,” said Max.

“You are, most certainly, not the only one.  And here is what I find most perplexing about them.  Why, oh
why
, must they always perceive and need to discuss some sort of ever so grave problem when everything is perfectly acceptable?”

Max laughed, “Exactly.  You’ve hit the fusion reactor with the missile that time.  And, then, once they’ve pointed out this previously invisible flaw in what was a completely satisfactory situation, there’s holy unshirted hell to pay if you ever dare to tell them you don’t see that same flaw yourself.”

“Stars forbid it!”  Sahin raised his hands, palms forward, in mock supplication.

“Absolutely.  From the woman’s perspective, if the man thinks that things are all right and the woman thinks there’s a problem, then it
must
be because something is wrong with the man.  Something so totally wrong with the man, in fact, that the woman invariably finds herself wondering whether the two of them should be together at all.  I mean, how could she carry on a relationship with someone so emotionally blind and clueless, right?  It sure as hell never occurs to her that the reason she thinks something is wrong is because her expectations are too high for the situation or simply inappropriate for the circumstances.”

“I would take that as a given, my friend.  The scenario you describe is painfully familiar to me.  Painfully familiar, indeed.  But, it need not apply to the situation of your crewman and his many wives.  His culture may have different rules about domestic economy than yours.  Or, perhaps, everyone who is a party to the arrangement may have expectations regarding the degree of harmony and agreement in the family that are lower.  One of the best ways to guarantee success in any endeavor, you know, is to lower the threshold of what one considers ‘success.’”

“Still, you know how women are,” Max said.  “I’d suspect that there’d be all manner of scratching and clawing between them.”

“You never know.  Women are often more capable of rational cooperation and collective action than we are, and frequently with less need for individual dominance.  They might get along like sisters, and present a united front
vis a vis
the husband, prevailing in all things through the concerted and cooperative exercise of their womanly wiles.  In many ways, women are vastly more wise than men.  Every study shows that their Emotional Intelligence, on average, significantly exceeds ours.  They are much better at getting their way with us than we are with them.  I suspect that women are the true rulers of all Human Space, sitting back in the Core Systems like queen bees in the center of the hive with us, the worker drones, buzzing about the galaxy bringing in the pollen of resources and commerce while keeping the Krag at bay.  Yes, I think that outcome is the most likely one.  Given the relative ease by which men are manipulated by the use of sexual charms, a society such as the one from which this fellow comes would likely be a paper-thin veneer of patriarchalism covering a core entirely dominated and ruled in every important respect by the females.”

“You may be right at that, Doctor.  Either way, I don’t think that either of us will ever understand them.  Fortunately, in the Navy as it is currently constituted, that is not a handicap.  If we understand men, we know what we need to know.”  A moment’s pause while he sipped his coffee.  “When I mentioned scratching and clawing earlier, it reminded me of your newest patient, the man wounded in the boarding expedition.  How is he faring?”

“Spacer Alvarez will be fine.  The sleeve of his SCU—remarkably tough garment—took the brunt of the attack, although I did have to repair some lacerations in his left hand.  It is always surprising to me how much damage can be done by the comparatively short claws of a domestic feline.  They can be surprisingly dangerous animals.”

“Well, you can’t blame the cat in this case.  The crew of that freighter had the poor creature shut up in a tiny storage locker to keep it away from that Krag they had on board, and when Alvarez opened it as part of his search, it came out of there like a Talon missile with claws.”

“And, I understand it ran out of the compartment, up the corridor, and straight across the boarding tube right onto the
Cumberland
.”
Max smiled beatifically.  “Yep.  Ain’t it grand?  The men could not be more pleased.  It’s a big, fine-looking, black cat too.”

“I seem to recall having heard somewhere that there is an old superstition about black cats being lucky for a ship.”

“Sure is.  There’s nothing better, especially if it joins the ship voluntarily like this one did.”

“What difference could that make?”  The doctor shook his head with incomprehension.  “I can never manage to understand the workings of the superstitious mind.  I would think that, either you have a cat and it is lucky or you do not and you are, therefore, not the beneficiary of its luck.  It is a simple binary decision set.”

Max managed not to roll his eyes.  Barely.  “The cat’s choice is very important.  According to Spacer lore, cats have nine lives and are said to be able to sense whether a ship is going to be safe, and so a cat would not go aboard a ship if something bad was going to happen to it.  Given a choice between two ships, the cat, especially a black one, will always go to the luckier of the two.  So, if a cat decides to join your ship, you know the ship will fare well.  Similarly, if the cat abandons your ship, it is seen as a very bad thing, indeed.”

“I understand.  From a scientific and rational perspective, it is still pure nonsense of course, but I understand.  Pray tell, how common are cats on warships?”

“The Navy actually collects statistics on such things, and the last time I checked the figure was about a quarter of all ships of all Types.  I don’t remember if they calculated separate figures by Type, but from what I’ve seen they are more common on fighting vessels.  My experience is that, for one reason or another, most of the better ships—that is, the ones in the best order with the highest combat effectiveness and the highest moral—have a cat.  Not all, but most.”

“Have we inquired of the freighter crew what the animal’s name is?”

“Certainly not,” Max said, appalled.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he explained with exaggerated patience, “according to custom, when a cat changes ships, it gets a new name.  One selected by the enlisted and the Mids.  It always amazes me that two hundred men and boys can manage in an amiable fashion to agree on a name, but they always do, and in short order.  The animal had not been on board more than an hour or two before the lower decks determined that his name was ‘Clouseau.’”

“It is an unusual name.”

“Some old comic figure.  Never heard of him.”

“Neither have I.  That would be a peculiar name for a domestic pet.  Is it out of the ordinary for a warship’s cat?”

“No, not at all.  Ship’s cats tend to have unusual names.  No one names a ship’s cat ‘fluffy’ or ‘whiskers’ or something like that.  The cat on the
San Jacinto
was named Sam Houston after the man who commanded the victorious forces at the battle for which the ship was named.  The one on the
Capetown
was Willie, which was the name of General Patton’s dog.  On the
Agincourt
, she was Pistol.”

“Pistol?  Oh, that is very clever.  An allusion to the character in
Henry V
, Shakespeare’s play about the Battle of Agincourt.  Someone on the ship must have been very literate, indeed.”

“I suppose.  I had never made the connection.”

“Aside from its name, there are so many practical issues that having an animal on board raises.  On whom does the duty of caring for the animal fall?  Where does it perform its eliminatory processes?”

“All covered by naval custom and naval regulation.  Standard supply loadout includes a number of litter boxes appropriate to the size of the ship, a supply of cat litter, scratching posts, food and water dishes, and other things you need for cats.  We also have lots of cat information in the computer.  Look in your database, and you’ll find gig after gig of it.  Huge section on medical care for felines, the formulations for the pharmaceuticals needed to treat them, how to do surgical procedures on them, and things of that nature.”

The doctor looked horrified.  “Pharmaceuticals?  Treatment?  Surgical procedures?  I am to be a Veterinarian?  I have not been trained in that discipline.  I have never so much as dissected a cat, much less performed surgery on one.”