Black gave the impression he didn't know whether to laugh or curse or tuck his tail between his legs and run like a dog. The three women were obviously enjoying themselves enormously at his expense.

"Maybe we should just parachute-drop you witches straight into Tokyo," he said in the end. "A few days of your company, and the Japs would be begging us for mercy."

"Not if they know how to treat a girl," said Julia.

"Perhaps they could give me a few tips," Black muttered, before addressing Rosanna. "Miss Natoli," he said, "you were always invited, by the way. Admiral Spruance wants to talk to you both. It's nothing heavy, a dinner and a talk. He's just curious about the future, I guess."

Slim Jim Davidson couldn't believe how his luck had run hot and cold since the future had turned up to wreck the Astoria. First and most importantly, there was a chance he might live now. He'd been stunned to discover that he was supposed to die in a few weeks at the Battle of Savo Island. One of the crew on the Leyte Gulf had searched Fleetnet for him-Slim Jim was assiduous about learning the lingo-and had pulled his name out of a database of American war dead.

That was some powerfully spooky shit there.

"Guess you should be glad we turned up to kick your ass instead," the guy had joked.

But Slim Jim hadn't thought it was funny at all. It had landed him in a blue funk for two days. He'd only surfaced when Mohr had told him everyone off the Astoria would be moving ashore as soon as they hit Pearl. There was nowhere to berth them on the surviving ships. That got him to thinking on how he might fence the stuff he'd lifted from the Leyte Gulf, which got him to thinking about how much money he stood to make. Which, in turn, led him to the conclusion that if he made enough of the folding stuff he might be able to grease the right wheels and roll right on out of the firing line. Then he could land himself a position more befitting a man of his talents.

Once ashore, they had set up tents for temporary quarters. That had dampened his spirits some again. Pitched in a burned-out expanse of sugarcane stubble a mile or so from Hickam Field, they reminded him of his time on the road gang. But there was no work to be done, which suited him fine.

All he had to do was figure out how to get down to Hotel Street in Honolulu. Given a few hours down there, he was sure he'd be able to move this loot. Unfortunately they were all confined to camp indefinitely. Somebody told him it was because a couple of Japs from the future had got themselves whacked, but Slim Jim took that for bullshit. The navy had stuck him in this shithole with a moron for a roomy, because the navy had nothing better to do than make his sorry life even more miserable than it might be.

Surprisingly enough, it was the moron, Moose Molloy Jr., who came to the rescue. Mohr had asked him to volunteer for a work detail, helping shift a bunch of gear that had belonged to some dead officers out of the Moana Hotel. There was certain to be heavy lifting involved, a Moose Jr. specialty.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me, Davidson," the chief had said when Slim Jim had confronted him, eager to pitch in. "What, d'you take a round in the head or something? You forget what a lazy asshole you are?"

"Come on, Chief," he'd pleaded. "I'm going outta my fucking nut in this cane field. We been here three days with nothing to do but scratch our balls. I just about scratched mine right off. It's Montgomery all over again, Chief. You gotta let me outta this joint. Even working is better than this!"

No doubt Mohr knew he was being played, but he must've decided to let the bum have a bit of rope, see if he looped it around his scrawny neck and hung himself.

"Okay, Davidson, get on the bus with Moose and Barnes. And don't let me find you pocketing the effects of any of them fine, dead, officers and gentlemen."

Slim Jim managed to sound reasonably offended. "Stealing from the dead? That's not my thing, Chief," he said, as he hurried onto an old school bus, repainted in dun green for war service.

"No, bouncing checks off old ladies is more your style, dickwad," Mohr grumbled.

The ride into Honolulu was brief, and Slim Jim couldn't help but laugh at all the dumb jerks they left behind, running along, begging for a chance to get out of that hellhole of a field. They raised a cloud of black ash and dust as they trotted beside the bus. Mohr kept a close eye on his least favorite charge as they bounced and squeaked their way into town. But cops had been eyeballing Slim Jim for a lot longer than Eddie Mohr. He knew to keep himself clean, which meant staying in character. He regaled the men in the seats around him with the exploits from his previous visits to the body shops along River and Barretania Streets. Mohr eventually tired of his bullshit and tuned him out. Slim Jim kept it going all the way to the Moana.

"Would you look at this joint," said Moose Jr., with real awe in his voice as they piled out in front of the hotel. Forty years old and fronting directly onto Waikiki Beach, the Moana had serviced some of the wealthiest tourists in the world before the war. Along with the Royal, it was one of the few grand structures in Honolulu. The coral reef that covered the floor of the bay had been smothered in sand dumped from barges in front of the Moana, so that the dainty feet of wealthy tourists wouldn't be too badly cut up.

Ever since the Japanese raid in December, naval personnel had replaced the tourists, and barbed wire now ran along the beach, blocking access to the brilliant green water.

Slim Jim nudged Moose in the ribs. "What'd I tell you about officers, Moose?"

"To love, honor, and obey them," said Mohr, punching Slim Jim in the back. "C'mon, Vladimir, the workers' revolution can wait. We got barges to lift and bales to tote."

The duty wasn't excessively heavy. Mostly they had to ferry a lot of sea trunks and personal luggage out of the hotel and into a truck for transfer to graves registration. A couple of the former occupants did have some curious and inconvenient items, like the pilot who'd acquired an antique mahogany dining table on a tour of China and had somehow managed to carry it through two other postings. Moose, Slim Jim, and four other guys were needed to shift that baby.

As tempting as it would have been to pocket a curio here or there, Davidson knew not to tempt fate. Mohr had eyes in the back of his box-shaped head and he was a lay-down certainty to be watching like a hawk. No, Slim Jim was a patient crook, content to pretend he wanted nothing more than to escape the prison camp of the cane field. If he behaved himself and didn't give the chief reason to get on his case, he might just get enough wiggle room to do some real business before long.

So he lifted and grunted and sweated with the others, grumbling occasionally, as was his style, complaining about officers who lived like royalty, and bullshitting about how he'd stayed in plenty of joints that'd make this place look like a flophouse. They finished up at 1730 with a few more hours of work to go. A strict curfew was in place from 1800, however, so Mohr herded them back onto the bus for the trip back to the cane field.

The bullshitting wasn't nearly as loud or energetic on the way home. Talk turned to Midway, to curiosity and speculation.

"I heard they put a new heart in Smithy," said a voice from the dark in the rear of the bus. "Like a fucking windup clock it is, I heard. All gears and wires."

"Crap," said someone else. "It'd rust in there."

"No," said Chief Mohr, "that one's true. I visited Smithy myself on that big Marine Corps flattop they got. They split him right open, took out his old heart, and put in this new one, made of some kind of miracle plastic or something. Reckon it'll be beating a hundred years after he's gone."