Bill never realized that sex was the cause of it all. If the sun that morning had not been burning so warmly in the brassy sky of Phigerinadon II, and if he had not glimpsed the sugar-white and wine-barrel-wide backside of Inga-Maria Calyphigia, while she bathed in the stream, he might have paid more attention to his plowing than to the burning pressures of heterosexuality and would have driven his furrow to the far side of the hill before the seductive music sounded along the road. He might never have heard it, and his life would have been very, very different. But he did hear it and dropped the handles of the plow that was plugged into the robomule, turned, and gaped.
It was indeed a fabulous sight. Leading the parade was a one-robot band, twelve feet high and splendid in its great black busby that concealed the hi-fi speakers. The golden pillars of its legs stamped forward as its thirty articulated arms sawed, plucked, and fingered at a dazzling variety of instruments. Martial music poured out in wave after inspiring wave, and even Bill's thick peasant feet stirred in their clodhoppers as the shining boots of the squad of soldiers crashed along the road in perfect unison. Medals jingled on the manly swell of their scarlet-clad chests, and there could certainly be no nobler sight in all the world. To their rear marched the sergeant, gorgeous in his braid and brass, thickly clustered medals and ribbons, sword and gun, girdled gut and steely eye which sought out Bill where he stood gawking over the fence. The grizzled head nodded in his direction, the steel-trap mouth bent into a friendly smile and there' was a conspiratorial wink. Then the little legion was past, and hurrying behind in their wake came a huddle of dust-covered ancillary robots, hopping and crawling or rippling along on treads. As soon as these had gone by Bill climbed clumsily over the split-rail fence and ran after them. There were no more than two interesting events every four years here, and he was not going to miss what promised to be a third.
A crowd had already gathered in the market square when Bill hurried up, and they were listening to an enthusiastic band concert. The robot hurled itself into the glorious measures of “Star Troopers to the Skies Avaunt,” thrashed its way through “Rockets Rumble,” and almost demolished itself in the tumultuous rhythm of “Sappers at the Tithead Digging.” It pursued this last tune so strenuously that one of its legs flew off, rising high into the air, but was caught dexterously before it could hit the ground, and the music ended with the robot balancing on its remaining leg, beating time with the detached limb. It also, after an ear-fracturing peal on the basses, used the leg to point across the square to where a tri-di screen and refreshment booth had been set up. The troopers had vanished into the tavern, and the recruiting sergeant stood alone among his robots, beaming a welcoming smile.
“Now hear this! Free drinks for all, courtesy of the Emperor, and some lively scenes of jolly adventure in distant climes to amuse you while you sip,” he called in an immense and leathery voice.
Most of the people drifted over, Bill in their midst, though a few embittered and elderly draft-dodgers slunk away between the houses. Cooling drinks were shared out by a robot with a spigot for a navel and an inexhaustible supply of plastic glasses in one hip. Bill sipped his happily while he followed the enthralling adventures of the space troopers in full color, with sound effects and stimulating subsonics. There was battle and death and glory, though it was only the Chingers who died: troopers only suffered neat little wounds in their extremities that could be covered easily by small bandages. And while Bill was enjoying this, Recruiting Sergeant Grue was enjoying him, his little piggy eyes ruddy with greed as they fastened onto the back of Bill's neck.
This is the one! he chortled to himself while, unknowingly, his yellowed tongue licked at his lips. He could already feel the weight of the bonus money in his pocket. The rest of the audience. were the usual mixed bag of overage men, fat women, beardless youths, and other unenlistables. All except this broad-shouldered, square-chinned, curly-haired chunk of electronic-cannon fodder. With a precise hand on the controls the sergeant lowered the background subsonics and aimed a tight-beam stimulator at the back of his victim's head.
Bill writhed in his seat, almost taking part in the glorious battles unfolding before him.
As the last chord died and the screen went blank, the refreshment robot pounded hollowly on its metallic chest and bellowed, “DRINK! DRINK! DRINK!” The sheeplike audience swept that way, all except Bill, who was plucked from their midst by a powerful arm.
“Here, I saved some for you,” the sergeant said, passing over a prepared cup so loaded with dissolved ego-reducing drugs that they were crystallizing out at the bottom. “You're a fine figure of a lad and to my eye seem a cut above the yokels here. Did you ever think of making your career in the forces?” “I'm not the military type, Shargeant…” Bill chomped his jaws and spat to remove the impediment to his speech and puzzled at the sudden-fogginess in his thoughts. Though it was a tribute to his physique that he was even conscious after the volume of drugs and sonics that he had been plied with.
“Not the military type. My fondest ambition is to be of help in the best way I can, in my chosen career as a Technical Fertilizer Operator, and I'm almost finished with my correspondence course… “ “That's a crappy job for a bright lad like you,” the sergeant said, while clapping him on the arm to get a good feel of his biceps. Rock: He resisted the impulse to pull Bill's lip down and take a quick peek at the condition of his back teeth. Later. “Leave that kind of job to those that like it. No chance of promotion. While a career in the troopers has no top. Why, Grand-Admiral Pflunger came up through the rocket tubes, as they say, from, recruit trooper to grandadmiral. How does that sound?” “It sounds very nice for Mr. Pflunger, but I think fertilizer operating is more fun. Gee-I'm feeling sleepy. I think I'll go lie down.” “Not before you've seen this, just as a favor to me of course,” the sergeant said, cutting in front of him and pointing to a large book held open by a tiny robot. “Clothes make the man, and most men would be ashamed to be seen in a crummy-looking smock like that thing draped around you or wearing those broken canal boats on their feet. Why look like that when you can look like this?” Bill's eyes followed the thick finger to the color plate in the book where a miracle of misapplied engineering caused his own face to appear on the illustrated figure dressed in trooper red. The sergeant flipped the pages, and on each plate the uniform was a little more gaudy, the rank higher. The last one was that of a grand-admiral, and Bill blinked at his own face under the plumed helmet, now with a touch of crow's-feet about the eyes and sporting a handsome and grayshot mustache, but still undeniably his own.
“That's the way you will look,” the sergeant murmured into his ear, “once you have climbed the ladder of success. Would you like to try a uniform on? Of course you would like to try a uniform on. Tailorl” When Bill opened his mouth to protest the sergeant put a large cigar into it, and before he could get it out the robot tailor had rolled up, swept a curtain-bearing arm about him and stripped him naked. “Hey! Hey!” he said.
“It won't hurt,” the sergeant said, poking his great head through the curtain and beaming at Bill's muscled form… He poked a finger into a pectoral (rock), then withdrew.
“Ouch!” Bill said, as the tailor extruded a cold pointer and jabbed him with it, measuring his size. Something went chunk deep inside its tubular torso, and a brilliant red jacket began to emerge from a slot in the front. In an instant this was slipped onto Bill and the shining golden buttons buttoned. Luxurious gray moleskin trousers were pulled on next, then gleaming black knee-length boots. Bill staggered a bit as the curtain was whipped away and a powered full-length mirror rolled up.
“Oh, how the girls love a uniform,” the sergeant said, “and I can't blame them.” A memory of the vision of Inga-Maria Calyphigia's matched white moons obscured Bill's sight for a moment, and when it had cleared he found he was grasping a stylo and was about to sign the form that the recruiting sergeant held before him.
“No,” Bill said, a little amazed at his own firmness of mind. “I don't really want to. Technical Fertilizer Operator…” “And not only will you receive this lovely uniform, an enlistment bonus, and a free medical examination, but you will be awarded these handsome medals.” The sergeant took a flat box, offered to him on cue by a robot, and opened it to display a glittering array of ribbons and bangles. “This is the Honorable Enlistment Award,” he intoned gravely, pinning a jewel-encrusted nebula, pendant on chartreuse, to Bill's wide chest. “And the Emperor's Congratulatory Gilded Horn, the Forward to Victory Starburst, the Praise Be Given Salutation of the Mothers of the Victorious Fallen, and the Everflowing Cornucopia which does not mean anything but looks nice and can be used to carry contraceptives.” He stepped back and admired Bill's chest; which was now adangle with ribbons, shining metal, and gleaming paste gems.
“I just couldn't,” Bill said. “Thank you anyway for the offer, but… “ The sergeant smiled, prepared even for this eleventh-hour resistance, and pressed the button on his belt that actuated the programed hypno-coil in the heel of Bill's new boot. The powerful neural current surged through the contacts and Bill's hand twitched and jumped, and when the momentary fog had lifted from his eyes he saw that he had signed his name.
“But… ' “Welcome to the Space Troopers;” the sergeant boomed, smacking him on the back (trapezius like rock) and relieving him of the stylo. “FALL IN!” he called in a larger voice, and the recruits stumbled from the tavern.
“What have they done to my sonl” Bill's mother screeched, coming into the market square, clutching at her bosom with one hand and towing his baby brother Charlie with the other. Charlie began to cry and wet his pants.
“Your son is now a trooper for the greater glory of the Emperor,” the sergeant said, pushing his slack-jawed and round-shouldered recruit squad into line.
“No! it can't be…” Bill's mother sobbed, tearing at her graying hair.
“I'm a poor widow, he's my sole support… you cannot… I” “Mother…” Bill said, but the sergeant shoved him back into the ranks. ' “Be brave, madam,” he said. “There can be no greater glory for a mother.” He dropped a large and newly minted coin into her hand. “Here is the enlistment bonus, the Emperor's shilling. I know he wants you to have it. ATTENTION!” With a clash of heels the graceless recruits braced their shoulders and lifted their chins. Much to his surprise, so did Bill.
“RIGHT TURN!” In a single, graceful motion they turned, as the command robot relayed the order to the hypno-coil in every boot. “FORWARD MARCH!” And they did, in perfect rhythm, so well under control that, try as hard as he could, Bill could neither turn his head nor wave a last good-by to his mother. She vanished behind him, and one last, anguished wail cut through the thud of marching feet.
“Step up the count to 130,” the sergeant ordered, glancing at the watch set under the nail of his little finger. “Just ten miles to the station, and we'll be in camp tonight, my lads.” The command robot moved its metronome up one notch and the tramping boots conformed to the smarter pace and the men… began to sweat. By the time they had reached the copter station it was nearly dark, their red paper uniforms hung in shreds, the gilt had been rubbed from their pot-metal buttons, and the surface charge that repelled the dust from their thin plastic boots had leaked away. They looked as ragged, weary, dusty, and miserable as they felt.
It wasn't the recorded bugle playing reveille that woke Bill but the supersonics that streamed through the metal frame of his bunk that shook him until the fillings vibrated from his teeth. He sprang to his feet and stood there shivering in the gray of dawn. Because it was summer the floor was refrigerated: no mollycoddling of the men in Camp Leon Trotsky.
The pallid, chilled figures of the other recruits loomed up on every side, and when the soul-shaking vibrations had died away they dragged their thick sackcloth and sandpaper fatigue uniforms from their bunks, pulled them hastily on, jammed their feet into the great, purple recruit boots, and staggered out into the dawn.
“I am here to break your spirit,” a voice rich with menace told them, and they looked up and shivered even more as they faced the chief demon in this particular hell.
Petty Chief Officer Deathwish Drang was a specialist from the tips of the angry spikes of his hair to the corrugated stamping-soles of his mirrorlike boots. He was wide-shouldered and lean-kipped, while his long arms hung, curved like those of some horrible anthropoid, the knuckles of his immense fists scarred from the breaking of thousands of teeth. It was impossible to look at this detestable form and imagine that it issued from the tender womb of a woman. He could never have been born; he must have been built to order by the government. Most terrible of all was the head. The face! The hairline was scarcely a finger's-width above the black tangle of the brows that were set like a rank growth of foliage at the rim of the black pits that concealed the eyes-visible only as baleful red gleams in the Stygian darkness. A nose, broken and crushed, squatted above the mouth that was like a knife slash in the taut belly of a corpse, while from between the lips issued the great, white fangs of the canine teeth, at least two inches long, that rested in grooves on the lower lip.
“I am Petty Chief Officer Deathwish Drang, and you will call me 'sir' or 'm'lord. '” He began to pace grimly before the row of terrified recruits.
“I am your father and your mother and your whole universe and your dedicated enemy, and very soon I will have you regretting the day you were born. I will crush your will. When I say frog, you will jump. My job is to turn you into troopers, and troopers have discipline. Discipline means simply unthinking subservience,. loss of free will, absolute obedience. That is all I ask…” He stopped before Bill, who was not shaking quite as much as the others, and scowled.
“I don't like your face. One month of Sunday KP.” “Sir…” “And a second month-for talking back.” He waited, but Bill was silent. He had already learned his first lesson on how to be a good trooper. Keep your mouth shut. Deathwish paced on.
“Right now you are nothing but horrible, sordid, flabby pieces of debased civilian flesh. I shall turn that flesh to muscle, your wills to jelly, your minds to machines. You will become good troopers, or I will kill you.
Very soon you will be hearing stories about me, vicious stories, about how I lulled and ate a recruit who disobeyed me.” He hatred and stared at them, and slowly the coffin-lid lips parted in an evil travesty of a grin, while a drop of saliva formed at the tip of each whitened tusk.
“That story is true.” A moan broke from the row of recruits, and they shook as though a chill wind had passed over them. The smile vanished.
“We will run to breakfast now as soon as I have some volunteers for an easy assignment. Can any of you drive a helicar?” Two recruits hopefully raised their hands, and he beckoned them forward.
“All right, both of you, mops and buckets behind that door. Clean out the latrine while the rest are eating. You'll have a better appetite for lunch.” That was Bill's second lesson on how to be a good trooper: never volunteer.
The days of recruit training passed with a horribly lethargic speed.
With each day conditions became worse and Bill's exhaustion greater. This seemed impossible, but it was nevertheless true. A large number of gifted and sadistic minds had designed it to be that way. The recruits' heads were shaved for uniformity. The food was theoretically nourishing but incredibly vile and when, by mistake, one batch of meat was served in an edible state it was caught at the last moment and thrown out and the cook reduced two grades. Their sleep was broken by mock gas attacks and their free time filled with caring for their equipment. The seventh day was designated as a day of rest, but they all had received punishments, like Bill's KP, and it was as any other day. On this, the third Sunday of their imprisonment, they were stumbling through the last hour of the day before the lights were extinguished and they were finally permitted to crawl into their casehardened bunks. Bill pushed against the weak force field that blocked the door, cunningly designed to allow the desert flies to enter but not leave the barracks, and dragged himself in. After fourteen hours of KP his legs vibrated with exhaustion, and his arms were wrinkled and pallid as a corpse's from the soapy water. He dropped his jacket to the floor, where it stood stiffly supported by its burden of sweat, grease, and dust, and dragged his shaver from his footlocker.
In the latrine he bobbed his head around trying to find a clear space on one of the mirrors. All of them had been heavily stenciled in large letters with such inspiring messages as KEEP YOUR WUG SHUT-THE CHINGERS ARE LISTENING and IF YOU TALK THIS MAN MAY DIE. He finally plugged the shaver in next to WOULD YOU WANT YOUR SISTER TO MARRY ONE? and centered his face in the o in ONE.
Black-rimmed and bloodshot eyes stared back at him as he ran the buzzing machine over the underweight planes of his jaw. It took more than a minute for the meaning of the question to penetrate his fatigue-drugged brain.
“I haven't got a sister,” he grumbled peevishly, “and if I did, why should she want to marry a lizard anyway?” It was a rhetorical question, but it brought an answer from the far end of the room, from the last shot tower in the second row.
“It doesn't mean exactly what it says-it's just there to make us hate the dirty enemy more.”.
Bill jumped, he had thought he was alone in the latrine, and the razor buzzed spitefully and gouged a bit of flesh from his lip.
“Who's there? Why are you hiding?” he snarled, then recognized the huddled dark figure and the many pairs of boots. “Oh, it's only you, Eager.” His anger drained away, and he turned back to the mirror.
Eager Beager was so much a part of the latrine that you forgot he was there.
A moon-faced, eternally smiling youth, whose apple-red cheeks never lost their glow and whose smile looked so much out of place here in Camp Leon Trotsky that everyone wanted to kill him until they remembered that he was mad. He had to be mad because he was always eager to help his buddies and had volunteered as permanent latrine orderly. Not only that, but he liked to polish boots and had offered to do those of one after another of his buddies until now he did the boots for every man in the squad every night. Whenever they were in the barracks Eager Beager could be found crouched at the end of the thrones that were his personal domain, surrounded by the heaps of shoes and polishing industriously, his face wreathed in smiles. He would still be there after lights-out, working by the light of a burning wick stuck in a can of polish, and was usually up before the others in the morning, finishing his voluntary job and still smiling. Sometimes, when the boots were very dirty, he worked right through the night. The kid was obviously insane, but noone turned him in because he did such a good job on the boots, and they all prayed that he wouldn't die of exhaustion until recruit training was finished.
“Well if that's what they want to say, why don't they just say, `Hate the dirty enemy more,"' Bill complained. He jerked his thumb at the far wall, where there was a poster labeled KNOW THE ENEMY. It featured a life-sized illustration of a Chinger, a seven-foot-high saurian that looked very much like a scale-covered, four-armed, green kangaroo with an alligator's head. “Whose sister would want to marry a thing like that anyway? And what would a thing like that want to do with a sister, except maybe eat her?” Eager put a last buff on a purple toe and picked up another boot. He frowned for a brief instant to show what a serious thought this was. “Well you see, gee-it doesn't mean a real sister. It's just part of psychological warfare.
We have to win the war. To win the war we have to fight hard. In order to fight hard we have to have good soldiers. Good soldiers have to hate the enemy.
That's the way it goes. The Chingers are the only non-human race that has been discovered in the galaxy that has gone beyond the aboriginal level, so naturally we have to wipe them out.” “What the hell do you mean, naturally? I don't want to wipe anyone out.
I just want to go home and be a Technical Fertilizer Operator.” “Well, I don't mean you personally, of course-gee!” Eager opened a fresh can of polish with purple-stained hands and dug his fingers into it. “I mean the human race, that's just the way we do things. If we don't wipe them out they'll wipe us out. Of course they say that war is against their religion and they will only fight in defense, and they have never made any attacks yet.
But we can't believe them, even though it is true. They might change their religion or their minds some day, and then where would we be? The best answer is to wipe them out now.” Bill unplugged his razor and washed his face in the tepid, rusty water.
“It still doesn't seem to make sense. All right, so the sister I don't have doesn't marry one of them. But how about that “ he pointed to the stenciling on the duck boards, KEEP THIS SHOWER CLEAR-THE ENEMY CAN HEAR. “Or that-” The sign above the urinal that read BUTTON FLIES-BEWARE SPIES. “Forgetting for the moment that we don't have any secrets here worth traveling a mile to hear, much less twenty-five light years-how could a Chinger possibly be a spy?
What kind of make-up would disguise a seven-foot lizard as a recruit? You couldn't even disguise one to look like Deathwish Drang, though you could get pretty close-” The lights went out, and, as though using his name had summoned him like a devil from the pit, the voice of Deathwish blasted through the barracks.
“Into your sacks! Into your sacks! Don't you lousy bowbs know there's a war on!” Bill stumbled away through the darkness of the barracks where the only illumination was the red glow from Deathwish's eyes. He fell asleep the instant his head touched his carborundum pillow, and it seemed that only a moment had elapsed before reveille sent him hurtling from his bunk. At breakfast, while he was painfully cutting his coffee-substitute into chunks small enough to swallow, the telenews reported heavy fighting in the Beta Lyra sector with mounting losses. A groan rippled through the mess hall when this was announced, not because of any excess of patriotism but because any bad news would only make things worse for them. They did not know how this would be arranged, but they were positive it would be. They were right. Since the morning was a bit cooler than usual the Monday parade was postponed until upon when the ferro-concrete drill ground would have warmed up nicely and there would be the maximum number of heat-prostration cases. But this was just the beginning.
From where Bill stood at attention near the rear he could see that the air-conditioned canopy was up on the reviewing stand. That meant brass. The trigger guard of his atomic rifle dug a hole into his shoulder, and a drop of sweat collected, then dripped from the tip of his nose. Out of the comers of his eyes he could see the steady ripple of motion as men collapsed here and there among the massed ranks of thousands and were dragged to the waiting ambulances by alert corpsmen. Here they were laid in the shade of the vehicles until they revived and could be urged back to their positions in the formation.
Then the band, burst into “Spacemen Ho and Chingers Vanquished!” and the broadcast signal to each boot heel snapped the ranks to attention at the same instant, and the thousands of rifles flashed in the sun. The commanding general's staff car-this was obvious from the two stars painted on it-pulled up beside the reviewing stand and a tiny, round figure moved quickly through the furnacelike air to the cornfort of the enclosure. Bill had never seen him any closer than this, at least from the front, though once while he was returning from late KP he had spotted the general getting into his car near the camp theater. Al least Bill thought it was he, but all he had seen was a brief refit view. Therefore, if he had a mental picture of the general, it was of a large backside superimposed on a teeny, antlike figure. lie thought of most officers in these general terms, since the men of course had nothing to do with officers during their recruit training. Bill had had a good glimpse of a second lieutenant once, near the orderly room, and he knew he had a face.
And there had been a medical officer no more than thirty yards away, who had lectured them on venereal disease, but Bill had been lucky enough to sit behind a post and had promptly fallen asleep.
After the band shut up the anti-G loudspeakers floated out over the troops, and the general addressed them. He had nothing to say that anyone cared to listen to, and he closed with the announcement that because of losses in the field their training program would be accelerated, which was just what they had expected. Then the band played some more and they marched back to the barracks, changed into their haircloth fatigues, and marched-double time now-to the range, where they fired their atomic rifles at plastic replicas of Chingers that popped up out of holes in the ground. Their aim was bad until Deathwish Drang popped out of a hole and every trooper switched to full automatic and hit with every charge fired from every gun, which is a very hard thing to do.
Then the smoke cleared, and they stopped cheering and started sobbing when they saw that it was only a plastic replica of Deathwish, now torn to tiny pieces, and the original appeared behind them and gnashed its tusks and gave them all a full month's KP…
“The human body is a wonderful thing,” Bowb Brown said a month later, when they were sitting around a table in the Lowest Ranks Klub eating plasticskinned sausages stuffed with road sweepings and drinking watery warm beer.
Bowb Brown was a throatherder from the plains, which is why they called him Bowb, since everyone knows just what thoatherders do with their thoats. He was tall, thin, and bowlegged, his skin burnt to the color of ancient leather.
He rarely talked, being more used to the eternal silence of the plains broken only by the eerie cry of the restless thoat, but he was a great thinker, since the one thing he had plenty of was time to think in. He could worry a thought for days, even weeks, before he mentioned it aloud, and while he was thinking about it nothing could disturb him. He even let them call him Bowb without protesting: call any other trooper bow b and he would hit you in the face. Bill and Eager and the other troopers from X squad sitting around the table all clapped and cheered, as they always did when Bowb said something.
“Tell, us more, Bowb!” “It can still talk-I thought it was dead!” “Go on-why is the body a wonderful thing?” They waited in expectant silence, while Bowb managed to tear a bite from his sausage and, after ineffectual chewing, swallowed it with an effort that brought tears to his eyes. He eased the pain with a mouthful of beer and spoke.
“The human body is a wonderful thing, because if it doesn't die it lives.” They waited for more until they realized that he was finished, then they sneered.
“Boy, are you full of bowb!” “Sign up for OCS!” “Yeah-but what does it mean?” Bill knew what it meant but didn't tell them. There were only half as many men in the squad as there had been the first day. One man had been transferred, but all the others were in the hospital, or in the mental hospital, or discharged for the convenience of tire government as being too crippled for active service. Or dead. The survivors, after losing every ounce of weight not made up of bone or essential connective tissue, had put back the lost weight in the form of muscle and were now completely adapted to the rigors of Camp Leon Trotsky, though they still loathed it. Bill marveled at the efficiency of the system. Civilians had to fool around with examinations, grades, retirement benefits, seniority, and a thousand other factors that limited the efficiency of the workers. But how easily the troopers did it! They simply killed off the weaker ones and used the survivors. He respected the system. Though he still loathed it.
“You know what I need, I need a woman,” Ugly Ugglesway said.
“Don't talk dirty,” Bill told him promptly, since he had been correctly brought up.
“I'm not talking dirty!-” Ugly whined. “It's not like I said I wanted to re-enlist or that I thought Deathwish was human or anything like that. I just said I need a woman. Don't we all?” “I need a drink,” Bowb Brown said as he took a long swig from his glass of dehydrated reconstituted beer, shuddered, then squirted it out through his teeth in a long stream onto the concrete, where it instantly evaporated.
“Affirm, affirm,” Ugly agreed, bobbing his mat haired, warty head up and down. “I need a woman and a drink.” His whine became almost plaintive. “After all, what else is there to want in the troopers outside of out?” They thought about that a long time, but could think of nothing else that anyone really wanted. Eager Beager looked out from under the table, where he was surreptitiously polishing a boot and said that he wanted more polish, but they ignored him. Even Bill, now that he put his mind to it, could think of nothing he really wanted other than this inextricably linked pair. He tried hard to think of something else, since he had vague memories of wanting other things when he had been a civilian, but nothing else came to mind.
“Gee, it's only seven weeks more until we get our first pass,” Eager said from under the table, then screamed a little as everyone kicked him at once.
But slow as subjective time crawled by, the objective clocks were still operating, and the seven weeks did pass by and eliminate themselves one by one.
Busy weeks filled with all the essential recruit-training courses: bayonet drill, smallarms training, short-arm inspection, greypfing, orientation lectures, drill, communal singing and the Articles of War. These last were read with dreadful regularity twice a week and were absolute torture because of the intense somnolence they brought on. At the first rustle of the scratchy, monotonous voice from the tape player heads would begin to nod. But every seat in the auditorium was wired with an EEG that monitored the brain waves of the captive troopers. As soon as the shape of the Alpha wave indicated transition from consciousness to slumber a powerful jolt of current would be shot into the dozing buttocks, jabbing the owners painfully awake. The musty auditorium was a dimly lit torture chamber, filled with the droning, dull voice, punctuated by the sharp screams of the electrified, the sea of nodding heads abob here and there with painfully leaping figures.
No one ever listened to the terrible executions and sentences announced in the Articles for the most innocent of crimes. Everyone knew that they had signed away all human rights when they enlisted, and the itemizing of what they had lost interested them not in the slightest. What they really were interested in was counting the hours until they would receive their first pass. The ritual by which this reward was begrudgingly given was unusually humiliating, but they expected this and merely lowered their eyes and shuffled forward in the line, ready to sacrifice any remaining shards of their self-respect in exchange for the crimpled scrap of plastic. This rite finished, there was a scramble for the monorail train whose track ran on electrically charged pillars, soaring over the thirty-foot-high barbed wire, crossing the quicksand beds, then dropping into the little farming town of Leyville.
At least it had been an agricultural town before Camp Leon Trotsky had been built, and sporadically, in the hours when the troopers weren't on leave, it followed its original agrarian bent. The rest of the time the grain and feed stores shut down and the drink and knocking shops opened. Many times the same premises were used for both functions. A lever would be pulled when the first of the leave party thundered out of the station and grain bins became beds, salesclerks pimps, cashiers retained their same function-though the prices went up-while counters would be racked with glasses to serve as bars. It was to one of these establishments, a mortuary-cum-saloon, that Bill and his friends went.
“What'll it be, boys?” the ever smiling owner of the Final Resting Bar and Grill asked., “Double shot of Embalming Fluid,” Bowb Brown told him.
“No jokes,” the landlord said, the smile vanishing for a second as he took down a bottle on which the garish label Rte. WHISKEY had been pasted over the etched-in EMBALMING FLUID “Any trouble I call the MPs.” The smile returned as money struck the counter. “Name your poison, gents.” They sat around a long, narrow table as thick as it was wide, with brass handles on both sides, and let the blessed relief of ethyl alcohol trickle a path down their dust-lined throats.
“I never drank before I came into the service,” Bill said, draining four fingers neat of Old Kidney Killer and held his glass out for more.
“You never had to,” Ugly said, pouring.
“That's for sure,” Bowb Brown said, smacking his lips with relish and raising a bottle to his lips again.
“Gee,” Eager Beager said, sipping hesitantly at the edge of his glass, “it tastes like a tincture of sugar, wood chips, various esters, and a number of higher alcohols.” “Drink up,” Bowb said incoherently around the neck of the bottle. “All them things is good for you.” “Now I want a woman,” Ugly said, and there was a rush as they all jammed in the door, trying to get out at the same time, until someone shouted, “Look!” and they turned to see Eager still sitting at the table.
“Woman!” Ugly said enthusiastically, in the tone of voice you say Dinner!
when you are calling a dog. The knot of men stirred in the doorway and stamped their feet. Eager didn't move.
“Gee-I think I'll stay right here,” he said, his smile simpler than ever.
“But you guys run along.” “Don't you feel well, Eager?” “Feel fine.” “Ain't you reached puberty?” “Gee…” “What you gonna do here?” Eager reached under the table and dragged out a canvas grip. He opened it to show them that it was packed with great purple boots. “I thought I'd catch up on my polishing.” They walked slowly down the wooden sidewalk, silent for the moment. “I wonder if there is something wrong with Eager?” Bill asked, but no one answered him.
They were looking down the rutted street, at a brilliantly illuminated sign that cast a tempting, ruddy glow.
SPACEMEN'S REST it said. CONTINUOUS STRIP SHOW and BEST DRINKS and better PRIVATE ROOMS FOR GUESTS AND THEIR FRIENDS. They walked faster. The front wall of the Spacemen's Rest was covered with shatterproof glass cases filled with tri-di pix of the fully dressed (bangle and double stars) entertainers, and further in with pix of them nude (debangled with fallen stars). Bill stayed the quick sound of panting by pointing to a -small sign almost lost among the tumescent wealth of mammaries.
OFFICERS ONLY It read.
“Move along,” an MP grated, and poked at them with his electronic nightstick.
They shuffled on.
The next establishment admitted men of all classes, but the cover charge was seventy-seven credits, more than they all had between them. After that the OFFICERS ONLY began again, until the pavement ended and all the lights were behind them.
“What's that?” Ugly asked at the sound of murmured voices from a nearby darkened street, and peering closely they saw a line of troopers that stretched out of sight around a distant comer. “What's this?” he asked the last man in the line.
“Lower-ranks cathouse. Two credits, two minutes. And don't try to. buck the line, bowb. On the back, on the back.” They joined up instantly, and Bill ended up last, but not for long.
They shuffled forward slowly, and other troopers appeared and cued up behind him. The night was cool, and he took many life-preserving slugs from his bottle. There was little conversation and what there was died as the red-lit portal loomed ever closer. It opened and closed at regular intervals, and one by one Bill's buddies slipped in to partake of its satisfying, though rapid, pleasures. Then it was his turn and the door started to open and he started to step forward and the sirens started to scream and a large MP with a great fat belly jumped between Bill and the door.
“Emergency recall. Back to the base you men!” it barked.
Bill howled a strangled groan of frustration and leaped forward, but a light tap with the electronic nightstick sent him reeling back with the others.
He was carried along, half stunned, with the shuffling wave of bodies, while the sirens moaned and the artificial northern lights in the sky spelled out TO ARMS!!!! in letters of flame each a hundred miles long. Someone put his handout, holding Bill up as he started to slide under the trampling purple boots. It was his old buddy, Ugly, carrying a satiated smirk and he hated him and tried to hit him. But before he could raise his fist they were swept into a monorail car, hurtled through the night, and disgorged back in Camp Leon Trotsky. He forgot his anger when the gnarled claws of Deathwish Drang dragged them from the crowd.
“Pack your bags,” he rasped. “You're shipping out.” “They can't do that to us-we haven't finished our training.” “They can do whatever they want, and they usually do. A glorious space battle has just been fought to its victorious conclusion and there are over four million casualties, give or take a hundred thousand. Replacements are needed, which is you. Prepare to board the transports immediately if not sooner.” “We can't-we have no space gear! The supply room…” “All of the supply personnel have already been shipped out.” “Food…” “The cooks and KP pushers are already spacebound. This is an emergency.
All non-essential personnel are being sent out. Probably to die.” He twanged a tusk coyly and washed them with his loathsome grin. “While I remain here in peaceful security to train your replacements.” The delivery tube plunked at his elbow, and as he opened the message capsule and read its contents his smile slowly fell to pieces. “They're shipping me out too,” he said hollowly.
A total of 89,672,899 recruits had already been shipped into space through Camp Leon Trotsky, so the process was an automatic and smoothly working one, even though this time it was processing itself, like a snake swallowing its own tail. Bill and his buddies were the last group of recruits through, and the snake began ingesting itself right behind them. No sooner had they been shorn of their sprouting fuzz and deloused in the ultrasonic delouser than the barbers rushed at each other and in a welter of under and over arms, gobbets of hair, shards of mustache, bits of flesh, drops of blood, they clipped and shaved each other, then pulled the operator after them into the ultrasonic chamber. Medical corpsmen gave themselves injections against rocket-fever and spacecafard; record clerks issued themselves pay books; and the loadmasters kicked each other up the ramps and into the waiting shuttleships. Rockets blasted, living columns of fire like scarlet tongues licking down at the blasting pads, burning up the ramps in a lovely pyrotechnic display, since the ramp operators were also aboard. The ships echoed and thundered up into the night sky leaving Camp Leon Trotsky a dark and silent ghost town where bits of daily orders and punishment rosters rustled and blew from the bulletin boards, dancing through the deserted streets to finally plaster themselves against the noisy, bright windows of the Officers' Club where a great drinking party was in progress, although there was much complaining because the officers had to serve themselves.
Up and up the shuttleships shot, toward the great fleet of deep-spacers that darkened the stars above, a new fleet, the most powerful the galaxy had ever seen, so new in fact that the ships were still under construction. Welding torches flared in brilliant points of light while hot rivets hurled their flat trajectories across the sky into the waiting buckets. The spots of light died away as one behemoth of the star lanes was completed and thin screams sounded in the space-suit radio circuit as the workers, instead of being returned to the yards, were pressed into service on the ship they had so recently built.
This was total war.
Bill staggered through the sagging plastic tube that connected the shuttleship to a dreadnaught of space and dropped his bags iii front of a petty chief officer who sat at a desk in the hangar-sized spacelock. Or rather he tried to drop it, but since there was no gravity the bags remained in mid-air, and when he pushed them down he rose (since a body when it is falling freely is said to be in free fall, and anything with weight has no weight, and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction or something like that). The petty looked up and snarled and pulled Bill back down to the deck.
“None of your bowby spacelubber tricks, trooper. Name?” “Bill, spelled with two L's.” “Bil,” the petty mumbled, licking the end of his stylo, then inscribing it in the ship's roster with round, illiterate letters. “Two `L's' for officers only, bowb-learn your place. What's your classification?” “Recruit, unskilled, untrained, spacesick.” “Well don't puke in here, that's what you have your own quarters for. You are now a Fuse Tender Sixth Class, unskilled. Bunk down in compartment 34J-89T-ooi.
Move. And keep that woopsy-sack over your head.” No sooner had Bill found his quarters and thrown his bags into a bunk, where they floated five inches over the reclaimed rock-wool mattress, than Eager Beager came in, followed by Bowb Brown and a crowd of strangers, some of them carrying welding torches and angry expressions.
“Where's Ugly and the rest of the squad?” Bill asked.
Bowb shrugged and strapped himself into his bunk for a little shut-eye. Eager opened one of the six bags he always carried and removed some boots to polish.
“Are you saved?” A deep voice, vibrant with emotion, sounded from the other end of the compartment. Bill looked up, startled, and the big trooper standing there saw the motion and stabbed toward him with an immense finger. “You, brother, are you saved?” “That's a little hard to say,” Bill mumbled, bending over and rooting in his bag, hoping the man would go away. But he didn't; in fact, he came over and sat down on Bill's bunk. Bill tried to ignore him, but this was hard to do, because the trooper was over six feet high, heavily muscled, and ironjawed.
He had lovely, purplish-black skin that made Bill a little jealous, because his was only a sort of grayish pink. Since the trooper's shipboard uniform was almost the same shade of black, he looked all of a piece, very effective with his flashing smile and piercing gaze.
“Welcome aboard the Christine Keeler,” he said, and with a friendly shake splintered most of Bill's knucklebones. “The grand old lady of this fleet, commissioned almost a week ago. I'm the Reverend Fuse Tender Sixth Class Tembo, and I see by the stencil on your bag that your name is Bill, and since we're shipmates, Bill, please call me Tembo, and how is the condition of your soul?” “I haven't had much chance to think about it lately…” “I should think not, just coming from recruit training, since attendance of chapel during training is a court-martial offense. But that's all behind you now and you can be saved. Might I ask if you are of the faith…?” “My folks were Fundamentalist Zoroastrian, so I suppose… “ “Superstition, my boy, rank superstition. It was the hand of fate that brought us together in this ship, that your soul would have this one chance to be saved from the fiery pit. You've heard of Earth?” “I like plain food…” “It's a planet, my boy-the home of the human race. The home from whence we all sprang, see it, a green and lovely world, a jewel in space.” Tembo had slipped a tiny projector from his pocket while he spoke, and a colored image appeared on the bulkhead, a planet swimming artistically through the void, girdled by white clouds. Suddenly ruddy lightning shot through the clouds, and they twisted and boiled while great wounds appeared on the planet below.
From the pinhead speaker came the tiny sound of rolling thunder. “But wars sprang up among the sons of man and they smote each other with the atomic energies until the Earth itself groaned aloud and mighty was the holocaust.
And when the final lightnings stilled there was death in the North, death in the West, death in the East, death, death, death. Do you realize what that means?” Tembo's voice was eloquent with feeling, suspended for an instant in mid-flight, waiting for the answer to the catechistical question.
“I'm not quite sure,” Bill said, rooting aimlessly in his bag, “I come from Phigerinadon II, it's a quieter place…” “There was no death in the SOUTH! And why was the South spared, I ask you, and the answer is because it was the will of Samedi that all the false prophets and false religions and false gods be wiped from the face of the Earth so that the only true faith should remain. The First Reformed Voodoo Church…” General Quarters sounded, a hooting alarm keyed to the resonant frequency of the human skull so that the bone vibrated as though the head were inside a mighty bell, and the eyes blurred out of focus with each stroke. There was a scramble for the passageway, where the hideous sound. was not quite as loud and where non-corns were waiting to herd them to their stations. Bill followed Eager Beager up an oily ladder and out of the hatch in the floor of the fuse room. Great racks of fuses stretched away on all sides of them, while from the tops of the racks sprang arm-thick cables that looped upward and vanished through the ceiling. In front of the racks, evenly spaced, were round openings a foot in diameter.
“My opening remarks will be brief, any trouble from any of you and I will personally myself feed you head first down the nearest fuseway.” A greasy forefinger pointed at one of the holes in the deck, and they recognized the voice of their new master. He was shorter and wider and thicker in the gut than Deathwish, but there was a generic resemblance that was unmistakable. “I am Fuse Tender First Class Spleen. I will take you crumbly, ground-crawling bowbs and will turn you into highly skilled and efficient fuse tenders or else feed you down the nearest fuseway. This is a highly skilled and efficient technical speciality which usually takes a year to train a good man but this is war so you are going to learn to do it now or else. I will now demonstrate. Tembo front and center. Take board 19J-9, it's out of circuit now.” Tembo clashed his heels and stood at rigid attention in front of the board.
Stretching away on both sides of him were the fuses, white ceramic cylinders capped on both ends with metal, each one a foot in diameter, five feet high, and weighing ninety pounds. There was a red band around the midriff of each fuse. First Class Spleen tapped one of these bands.
“Every fuse has one of these red bands, which is called a fuseband and is of the color red. When the fuse burns out this band turns black. I don't expect you to remember all this now, but it's in your manual and you are going to be letter-perfect before I am done with you, or else. Now I will show you what will happen when a fuse burns out. Tembo-that is a burned-out fuse! Go!” “Unggh!” Tembo shouted, and leaped at the fuse and grasped it with both hands. “Unggh!” he said again, as he pulled it from the clips, and again “Unggh!” when he dropped it into the fuseway. Then, still Ungghing, be pulled a new fuse from the storage rack and clipped it into place and with a final Unggh! snapped back to attention.
“And that's the way it is done, by the count, by the numbers, the trooper way, and you are going to learn it or else.” A dull buzzing sounded, grumbling through the air like a stifled eructation. “There's the chow call, so I'll let you break now, and while you're eating, think about what you are going to have to learn. Fall out.” Other troopers were going by in the corridor, and they followed them into the bowels of the ship.
“Gee-do you think the food might be any better than it was back in camp?” Eager asked, smacking his lips excitedly.
“It is completely impossible that it could be any worse,” Bill said as they joined a line leading to a door labeled CONSOLIDATED MESS NUMBER Two. “Any change will have to make it better. After all-aren't we fighting troopers now?
We have to go into combat fit, the manual says.” The line moved forward with painful slowness, but within an hour they were at the door. Inside the room a tired looking KP in soap-stained,. greasy fatigues handed Bill a yellow plastic cup from a rack before him. Bill moved on, and when the trooper in front of him stepped away, he faced a blank wall from which there emerged a single, handleless spigot. A fat cook standing next to it, wearing a large white chef's hat and a soiled undershirt, waved him forward with the soup ladle in his hand.
“C'mon, c'mon, ain't you never et before? Cup under the spout, dog tag in the slot, snap it up!” Bill held the cup as he had been advised and noticed a narrow slit in the metal wall just at eye level. His dog tags were hanging around his neck, and he pushed one of them into the slot. Something went bzzzzz, and a thin stream of yellow fluid gushed out, filling the cup halfway.
“Next man!” the cook shouted, and pulled Bill away so that Eager could take his place. “What is this?” Bill asked, peering into the cup.
“What is this! What is this!” the cook raged, growing bright red. “This is your dinner, you stupid bowbl This is absolutely chemically pure water in which are dissolved eighteen amino acids, sixteen vitamins, eleven mineral salts, a fatty acid ester, and glucose. What else did you expect?” “Dinner…?” Bill said hopefully, then saw red as the soup ladle crashed down on his head. “Could I have it without the fatty acid ester?” he asked hopefully, but be was pushed out into the corridor where Eager joined him.
“Gee,” Eager said. “This has all the food elements necessary to sustain life indefinitely. Isn't that marvelous?” Bill sipped at his cup, then sighed tremulously.
“Look at that,” Tembo said, and when Bill turned, a projected image appeared on the corridor wall. It showed a misty firmament, in which tiny figures seemed to be riding on clouds. “Hell awaits you, my boy, unless you are saved.
Turn your back on your superstitious ways, for the First Reformed Voodoo Church welcomes you with open arms; come unto her bosom, and find your place in heaven at Samedi's right hand. Sit there with Mondonguc and Bakalou and Zandor, who will welcome you.” The projected scene changed; the clouds grew closer, while from the little speaker came the tiny sound of a heavenly choir with drum accompaniment. Now the figures could be seen clearly, all with very dark skins and white robes from the back of which protruded great black wings. They smiled and waved gracefully to each other as their clouds passed, while singing enthusiastically and beating on the little tomtoms that each one carried. It was a lovely scene, and Bill's eyes misted a bit.
“Attention!” The barking tones echoed from the walls and the troopers snapped their shoulders back, heels together, eyes ahead. The heavenly choir vanished as Tembo shoved the projector back into his pocket.
“As you was,” First Class Spleen ordered, and they turned to see him leading two MPs with drawn handguns who were acting as bodyguards for an officer. Bill knew it was an officer because they had had an officer-identification course, plus the fact that there was a KNOW YOUR OFFICERS chart on the latrine wall that he had had a great deal of opportunity to study during an anguilluliasis epidemic. His jaw gaped open as the officer went by, almost close enough to touch, and stopped in front of Tembo.
“Fuse Tender Sixth Class Tembo, I have good news for you. In two weeks your seven-year period of enlistment will be up, and because of your fine record Captain Zekial has authorized a doubling of the usual mustering-out pay, an honorable discharge with band music, as well as your free transport back to Earth.” Tembo, relaxed and firm, looked down at the runty lieutenant with the well-chewed blond mustache who stood before him. “That will be impossible, Sir.” “Impossible!” the lieutenant screeched, and rocked back and forth on his high heeled boots. “Who are you to tell me what is impossible… I” “Not I, Sir,” Tembo answered with utmost calm. “Regulation i3-9A, paragraph 45, page 8923, volume 43 of Rules, Regulations and Articles of War. 'No man nor officer shall or will receive a discharge other than dishonorable with death sentence from a vessel, post, base, camp, ship, outpost, or labor camp during time of emergency… ' “ “Are you a ship's lawyer, Tembo?” “No, Sir. I'm a loyal trooper, Sir. I just want to do my duty, Sir.” “There's something very funny about you, Tembo. I saw in your record that you enlisted voluntarily without drugs and or hypnotics being used. Now you refuse discharge. That'sbad, Tembo, very bad. Gives you a bad name. Makes you look suspicious. Makes you look like a spy or something.” “I'm a loyal trooper, of the Emperor, sir, not a spy.” “You're not a spy, Tembo, we have looked into that very carefully. But why are you in the service, Tembo?” “To be a loyal trooper of the Emperor, sir, and to do my best to spread the gospel. Have you been saved, sir?” “Watch your tongue, trooper or I'll have you up on charges! Yes, we know that story-Reverend-but we don't believe it. You're being too tricky, but we'll find out…” He stalked away, muttering to himself, and they all snapped to attention until he was gone. The other troopers looked at Tembo oddly and did not feel comfortable until he had gone. Bill and Eager walked slowly back to their quarters.
“Turned down a discharge…!” Bill mumbled in awe.
“Gee,” Eager said, “maybe he's. nuts. I can't think of any other reason.” “Nobody could be that crazy,” Bill said. “I wonder what's in there?” pointing to a door with a large sign that read ADMITTANCE TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“Gee-I don't know-maybe food?” They slipped through instantly and closed the door behind them, but there was no food there. Instead they were in a long chamber with one curved wall, while attached to this wall were cumbersome devices each set with meters, dials, switches, controls, levers, a view screen, and a relief tube. Bill bent over and read the label on the nearest one.
“Mark IV Atomic Blaster-and look at the size of them! This must be the ship's main battery.” He turned around and saw that Eager was holding his arm up so that his wrist watch pointed at the guns and was pressing on the crown with the index finger of his other hand.
“What are you doing?” Bill asked.
“Gee-just seeing what time it was.” “How can you tell what time it is when you have the inside of your wrist toward your face and the watch is on the outside?” Footsteps echoed far down the long gun deck, and they remembered the sign on the outside of the door. In an instant they had slipped back through it, and Bill pressed it quietly shut. When he turned around Eager Beager had gone so that he had to make his way back to their quarters by himself. Eager had returned first and was busy shining boots for his buddies and didn't look up when Bill came in.
But what had he been doing with his watch?
This question kept bugging Bill all the time during the days of their training as they painfully learned the drill of fuse tending. It was an exacting, technical job that demanded all their attention, but in spare moments Bill worried. He worried when they stood in line for chow, and he worried during the few moments every night between the time the lights were turned off and sleep descended heavily upon his fatiguedrugged body. He worried whenever he had the time to do it, and he lost weight.
He lost weight not because he was worrying, but for the same reason everyone else lost weight. The shipboard rations. They were designed to sustain life, and that they did, but no mention was made of what kind of life it was to be.
It was a dreary, underweight, hungry one. Yet Bill took no notice of this.
He had a bigger problem, and he needed help: After Sunday drill at the end of their second week, he stayed to talk to First Class Spleen instead of joining the others in their tottering run toward the mess hall.
“I have a problem, sir…” “You ain't the only one, but one shot cures it and you ain't a man until you've had it.” “It's not that kind of a problem. I'd like to… see the…
chaplain…” Spleen turned white and sank back against the bulkhead. “Now I heard everything,” he said weakly. “Get down to chow, and if you don't tell anyone about this I won't either.” Bill blushed. “I'm sorry about this, First Class Spleen, but I can't help it.
It's not my fault I have to see, him, it could have happened to anyone…” His voice trailed away, and he looked down at his feet, rubbing one boot against another. The silence stretched out until Spleen finally spoke, but all the comradeliness was gone from his voice.
“All right, trooper-if that's the way you want it. But I hope none of the rest of the boys hear about it. Skip chow and get up there now-here's a pass.” He scrawled on a scrap of paper then threw it contemptuously to the floor, turning and walking away as Bill bent humbly to pick it up.
Bill went down dropchutes, along corridors, through passageways, and up ladders. In the ship's directory the chaplain was listed as being in compartment 362-B on the 89th deck, and Bill finally found this, a plain metal door set with rivets. He raised his hand to knock, while sweat stood out in great beads from his face and his throat was dry. His knuckles boomed hollowly on the panel, and after an endlcss period a muffled voice sounded from the other side.
“Yeah, yeah-c'mon in-it's open.” Bill stepped through and snapped to attention when he saw the officer behind the single desk that almost filled the tiny room. The officer, a fourth lieutenant, though still young was balding rapidly. There were black circles under his eyes, and he needed a shave. His tie was knotted crookedly and badly crumpled. He continued to scratch among the stacks of paper that littered the desk, picking them up, changing piles with them, scrawling notes on some and throwing others into an overflowing wastebasket. When he moved one of the stacks Bill saw a sign on the desk that read LAUNDRY OFFICER.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but I am in the wrong office. I was looking for the chaplain.” “This is the chaplain's office but he's not on duty until 2300 hours, which is; as someone even as stupid-looking as you can tell, is in fifteen minutes more.” “Thank you, sir, I'll come back…” Bill slid toward the door.
“You'll stay and work.” The officer raised bloodshot eyeballs and cackled evilly. “I got you. You can sort the hanky reports. I've lost six hundred jockstraps, and they may be in there. You think it's easy to be a laundry officer?” He sniveled with self-pity and pushed a tottering stack of papers over to Bill, who began to sort through them. Long before he was finished the buzzer sounded that ended the watch.
“I knew it!” the officer sobbed hopelessly, “this job will never end; instead it gets worse and worse. And you think you got problems!” He reached out an unsteady finger and flipped the sign on his desk over. It read CHAPLAIN on the other side. Then he grabbed the end of his necktie and pulled it back hard over his right shoulder. The necktie was fastened to his collar and the collar was set into ball bearings that rolled smoothly in a track fixed to his shirt. There was a slight whirring sound as the collar rotated; then the necktie was hanging out of sight down his back and his collar was now on backward, showing white and smooth and cool to thefront.
The chaplain steepled his fingers before him, lowered his eyes, and smiled sweetly. “How may I help you, my son?” “I thought you were the laundry officer,” Bill said, taken aback.
“I am, my son, but that is just one of the burdens that must fall upon my shoulders. There is little call for a chaplain in these troubled times, but much call for a laundry officer. I do my best to serve.” He bent his head humbly.
“But-which are you? A chaplain who is a part-time laundry officer, or a laundry officer who is a part-time chaplain?” “That is a mystery, my son. There are some things that it is best not to know. But I see you arc troubled. May I ask if you are of the faith?” “Which faith?” “That's what I'm asking you!” the chaplain snapped, and for a moment the Old Laundry Officer peeped through. “How can I help you if I do not know what your religion is?” “Fundamentalist Zoroastrian.” The chaplain took a plastic-covered sheet from a drawer and ran his finger down it. “Z… Z… Zen… Zodomite… Zoroastrian, Reformed Fundamentalist, is that the one?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, should be no trouble with this, my son… 21-52-05…” He quickly dialed the number on a control plate set into the desk; then, with a grand gesture and an evangelistic gleam in his eye, he swept all the laundry papers to the floor. Hidden machinery hummed briefly, a portion of the desk top dropped away and reappeared a moment later bearing a black plastic-box decorated with golden bulls, rampant. “Be with you in a second,” the chaplain said, opening the box.
First he unrolled a length of white cloth sewn with more golden bulls and draped this around his neck. He placed a thick, leather-bound book next to the box, then on the closed lid set two metal bulls with hollowed-out backs.
Into one of them he poured distilled water from a plastic flask and into the other sweet oil, which he ignited. Bill watched these familiar arrangements with growing happiness.
“It's very lucky,” Bill said, “that you are a Zoroastrian. It makes it easier to talk to you.” “No luck involved, my son, just intelligent planning.” The chaplain dropped some powdered Haoma into the flame, and Bill's nose twitched as the drugged incense filled the room. “By the grace of Ahura Mazdah I am an anointed priest of Zoroaster. By Allah's will a faithful muezzin of Islam, through Yahweh's intercession a circumcised rabbi, and so forth.” His benign face broke into a savage snarl. “And also because of an officer shortage I am the damned laundry officer.” His face cleared. “But now, you must tell me your problem…” “Well, it's not easy. It may be just foolish suspicion on my part, but I'm worried about one of my buddies. There is something strange about him. I'm not sure how to tell it…” “Have confidence, my boy, and reveal your innermost feelings to me, and do not fear. What I hear shall never leave this room, for I am bound to secrecy by the oath of my calling. Unburden yourself.” “That's very nice of you, and I do feel better already. You see, this buddy of mine has always been a little funny, he shines the boots for all of us and volunteered for latrine orderly and doesn't like girls.” The chaplain nodded beatifically and fanned some of the incense toward his nose. “I see little here to worry you, he sounds a decent lad. For is it not written in the Vendidad that we should aid our fellow man and seek to shoulder his burdens and pursue not the harlots of the streets?” Bill pouted. “That's all right for Sunday school, but it's no way to act in the troopers! Anyway, we just thought he was out of his mind, and he might have been-but that's not all. I was with him on the gun deck, and he pointed his watch at the guns and pressed the stem, and I heard it click! It could be a camera. I… I think he is a Chinger spy!” Bill sat back, breathing deeply and sweating. The fatal words had been spoken.
The chaplain continued to nod, smiling, half-unconscious from the Haoma fumes. Finally he snapped out of it, blew his nose, and opened the thick copy of the Avesta. He mumbled aloud in Old Persian a bit, which seemed to brace him, then slammed it shut.
“You must not bear false witness!” he boomed, fixing Bill with piercing gaze and accusing finger.
“You got me wrong,” Bill moaned, writhing in the chair. “He's done these things, I saw him use the watch. What kind of spiritual aid do you call this?” “Just a bracer, my boy, a touch of the old-time religion to renew your sense of guilt and start you thinking about going to church regular again. You have been backsliding!” “What else could I do-chapel is forbidden during recruit training?” “Circumstances are no excuse, but you will be forgiven this time because Ahura Mazdah is all-merciful.” “But what about my buddy-the spy?” “You must forget your suspicions, for they are not worthy of a follower of Zoroaster. This poor lad must not suffer because of his natural inclinations to be friendly, to aid his comrades, to keep himself pure, to own a crummy watch that goes click. And besides, if you do not mind my introducing a spot of logic-how could he be a spy? To be a spy he would have to be a Chinger, and Chingers are seven feet tall with tails. Catch?” “Yeah, yeah,” Bill mumbled unhappily. “I could figure that one out for myself-but it still doesn't explain everything…” “It satisfies me, and it must satisfy you. I feel that Ahriman has possessed you to make you think evil of your comrade, and you had better do some penance and join me in a quick prayer before the laundry officer comes back on duty.” This ritual was quickly finished, and Bill helped stow the things back in the box and watched it vanish back into the desk. He said good-by and turned to leave.
“Just one moment, my son,” the chaplain said with his warmest smile, reaching back over his shoulder at the same time to grab the end of his necktie.
He pulled, and his collar whirred about, and as it did the blissful expression was wiped from his face to be replaced by a surly snarl. “Just where do you think you're going, bowb! Put your ass back in that chair.” “B-but,” Bill stammered, “you said I was dismissed.” “That's what the chaplain said, and as laundry officer I have no truck with him. Now-fast-what's the name of this Chinger spy you are hiding?” “I told you about that under oath-” “You told the chaplain about it, and he keeps his word and he didn't tell me, but I just happened to hear.” He pressed a red button on the control panel.
“The MPs are on the way. You talk before they get here, bowb, or I'll have you keelhauled without a space suit and deprived of canteen privileges for a year.
The name?” “Eager Beager,” Bill sobbed, as heavy feet trampled outside and two redhats forced their way into the tiny room.
“I have a spy for you boys,” the laundry officer announced triumphantly, and the MPs grated their teeth, howled deep in their throats, and launched themselves through the air at Bill. He dropped under the assault of fists and clubs and was running with blood before the laundry officer could pull the overmuscled morons with their eyes not an inch apart off him.
“Not him…:' the officer gasped, and threw Bill a towel to wipe off some of the blood. “This is our informant, the loyal, patriotic hero who ratted on his buddy by the name of Eager Beager, who we will now grab and chain so he car. be questioned. Let's go.” The MPs held Bill up between them, and by the time they had come to the fuse tenders' quarters the breeze from their swift passage had restored him a bit.
The laundry officer opened the door just enough to poke in his head. “Hi, gang!” he called cheerily. “Is Eager Beager here?” Eager looked up from the boot he was polishing, waving and grinning.
“That's me-gee.” “Get him!” the laundry officer expostulated, jumping aside and pointing accusingly. Bill dropped to the floor as the MPs let go of him and thundered into the compartment. By the time he had staggered back to his feet Eager was pinioned, handcuffed and chained, hand and foot, but still grinning.
“Gee-you guys want some boots polished too?” “No backtalk, you dirty spy,” the laundry officer grated, and slapped him hard in the offensive grin. At least he tried to slap him in the offensive grin, but Beager opened his mouth and bit the hand that hit him, clamping down hard so that the officer could not get away. “He bit me!” the man howled, and tried desperately to pull free. Both MPs, each handcuffed to an arm of the prisoner, raised their clubs to give him a sound battering.
At this moment the top of Eager Beager's head flew open.
Happening at any other time, this would have been considered unusual, but happening at this moment it was spectacularly unusual, and they all, including Bill, gaped, as a seven-inch-high lizard climbed out of the open skull and jumped to the floor in which it made a sizable dent upon landing. It had four tiny arms, along tail, a head like a baby alligator, and was bright green. It looked exactly like a Chinger except that it was seven inches tall instead of seven feet.
“All bowby humans have B. O.,” it said, in a thin imitation of Eager Beager's voice. “Chingers can't sweat. Chingers forever!” It charged across the compartment toward Beager's bunk.
Paralysis prevailed. All of the fuse tenders who had witnessed the impossible events stood or sat as they had been, frozen with shock, eyes bulging like hard-boiled eggs. The laundry officer was pinioned by the teeth locked into his hand, while the two MPs struggled with the handcuffs that held them to the immobile body. Only Bill was free to move and, still dizzy from the beating, he bent over to grab the tiny creature. Small and powerful talons locked into his flesh, and he was pulled from his feet and went sailing through the air to crash against a bulkhead. “Gee-that's for you, you stoolie!” the minuscule voice squeaked.
Before anyone else could interfere, the lizardoid ran to Beager's pile of barracks bags and tore the topmost one open and dived inside. A high-pitched humming grew in volume an instant later, and from the bag emerged the bulletlike nose of a shining projectile. It pushed out until a tiny spaceship not two feet long floated in the compartment. Then it rotated about its vertical axis, stopping when it pointed at the bulkhead. The humming rose in pitch, and the ship suddenly shot forward and tore through the metal of the partition as if it had been no stronger than wet cardboard. There were other distant tearingsounds as it penetrated bulkhead after bulkhead until, with a rending clang, it crashed through the outer skin of the ship and escaped into space. There was the roar of air rushing into the void and the clamor of alarm bells.
“Well I'll be damned… “ the laundry officer said, then snapped his gaping mouth closed and screamed, “Get this thing offa my hand-it's biting me to death!” The two MPs still swayed back and forth, handcuffed effectively to the immobile figure of the former Eager Beager. Beager just stared, smiling around the grip he had on the officer's hand, and it wasn't until Bill got his atomic rifle and put the barrel into Eager's mouth and levered the jaw open that the hand could be withdrawn. While he did this Bill saw that the top of Eager's head had split open just above his ears and was held at the back by a shiny brass hinge. Inside the gaping skull, instead of brains and bones and things, was a model control room with a tiny chair, minuscule controls, TV screens, and a water cooler. Eager was just a robot worked by the little creature that had escaped in the spaceship. It looked like a Chinger-but it was only seven inches tall.
“Hey!” Bill said, “Eager is just a robot worked by the little creature that escaped in the spaceship! It looked like a Chinger-but it was only seven inches tall…” “Seven inches, seven feet-what difference does it make!” the laundry officer mumbled petulantly as he wrapped a handkerchief around his wounded hand. “You don't expect us to tell the recruits how small the enemy really are, or to explain how they come from a 10G planet. We gotta keep the morale up.”
Now that Eager Beager had turned out to be a Chinger spy, Bill felt very much alone. Bowb Brown, who never talked anyway, now talked even less, which meant never, so there was no one that Bill could bitch to. Bowb was the only other fuseman in the compartment who had been in Bill's squad at Camp Leon Trotsky, and all of the new men were very clannish and given to sitting close together and mumbling and throwing suspicious looks over their shoulders if he should come too close. Their only recreation was welding and every off watch they would break out the welders and weld things to the floor and the next watch cut them loose again, which is about as dim a way of wasting time as there is; but they seemed to enjoy it. So Bill was very much out of things and tried bitching to Eager Beager.
“Look at the trouble you got me into!” he whined.
Beager just smiled back, unmoved by the complaint.
“At least close your head when I'm talking to you,” Bill snarled, and reached over to slam the top of Eager's head shut. But it didn't do any good. Eager couldn't do anything any more except smile. He had polished his last boot.
He just stood there now; he was really very heavy and besides was magnetized to the floor, and the fuse tenders hung their dirty shirts and arc welders on him. He stayed there for three watches before someone figured out what to do with him, until finally a squad of MPs came with crowbars and tilted him into a handcar and rolled him away.
“So long,” Bill called out, waving after him, then went back to polishing his boots. “He was a good buddy, even if he was a Chinger spy.” Bowb didn't answer him, and welders wouldn't talk to him, and he spent a lot of the time avoiding Reverend Tembo. The grand old lady of the fleet, Christine Keeler, was still in orbit while her engines were being installed.
There was very little to do, because, in spite of what First Class Spleen had said, they had mastered all the intricacies of fuse tending in a little less than the prescribed year; in fact it took them something like maybe fifteen minutes. In his free time Bill wandered around the ship, going as far as the MPs who guarded the hatchways would allow him, and even considered going back to see the chaplain so he could have someone to bitch to. But if he timed it wrong he might meet the laundry officer again, and that was more than he could face. So he walked through the ship, very much alone, and looked in through the door of a compartment and saw a boot on a bed.
Bill stopped, frozen, immobile, shocked, rigid, horrified, dismayed, and had to fight for control of his suddenly contracted bladder.
He knew that boot. He would never forget that boot until the day he died, just as he would never forget his serial number and could say it frontward or backward or from the inside out. Every detail of that terrible boot was clear in his memory, from the snakelike laces in the repulsive leather of the uppers-said to be made of human skin-to the corrugated stamping-soles tinged with red that could only have been human blood. That boot belonged to Deathwish Drang.
The boot was attached to a leg, and paralyzed with terror, as unable to control himself as a bird before a snake, he found himself leaning further and further into the compact ment as his eyes traced up the leg past the belt to the shirt to the neck upon which rested the face that had featured largely in his nightmares since he had enlisted. The lips moved.
“Is that you, Bill? C'mon in and rest it.” Bill stumbled in.
“Have a hunk of candy,” Deathwish said, and smiled.
Reflex drove Bill's fingers into the offered box and set his jaw chewing on the first solid food that had passed his lips in weeks. Saliva spouted from dusty orifices, and his stomach gave a preliminary rumble, while his thoughts drove maddingly in circles as he tried to figure out what that expression was on Deathwish's face. Lips curved up at the corners behind the tusks, little crinkles on the cheeks. It was hopeless. He could not recognize it.
“I hear Eager Beager turned out to be a Chinger spy,” Deathwish said, closing the box of candy and sliding it under the pillow. “I should have figured that one out myself. I knew there was something very wrong with him, doing his buddies' boots and that crap, but I thought he was just nuts. Should have known better…” “Deathwish,” Bill said hoarsely, “it can't be, I know-but you are acting like a human being!” Deathwish chuckled, not his ripsaw-slicing-human-bone chuckle, but an almost normal one.
Bill stammered. “But you are a sadist, a pervert, a beast, a creature, a thing, a murderer…” “Why, thanks, Bill. That's very nice to hear. I try to do my job to the best of my abilities, but I'm human enough to enjoy a word of praise now and then.
Being a murderer is hard to project, but I'm glad it got across, even to a recruit as stupid as you were.” “B-but… aren't you really a…” “Easy now!” Deathwish snapped, and there was enough of the old venom and vileness to lower Bill's body temperature six degrees. Then Deathwish smiled again. “Can't blame you, son, for carrying on this way, you being kind of stupid and from a rube planet and having your education retarded by the troopers and all that. But wake up, boyl Military education is far too important a thing to be wasted by allowing amateurs to get involved. If you read some of the things in our college textbooks it would make your blood run cold, yes indeed. Do you realize that in prehistoric times the drill sergeants, or whatever it was they called them, were real sadists! The armed forces would let these people with no real knowledge absolutely destroy recruits. Let them learn to hate the service before they learned to fear it, which plays hell with discipline. And talk about wasteful! They were always marching someone to death by accident or drowning a squad or nonsense like that. The waste alone would make you cry.” “Could I ask what you majored in in college?” Bill asked in a very tiny and humble voice.
“Military Discipline, Spirit breaking, and Method Acting. A rough course, four years, but I graduated sigma cum, which is not bad for a boy from a working-class family. I've made a career of the service, and that's why I can't understand why the ungrateful bastards went and shipped me out on this crummy can!” He lifted his gold-rimmed glasses to flick away a developing tear.
“You expect gratitude from the service?” Bill asked humbly.
“No, of, course not, how foolish of me. Thanks for jerking me back into line, Bill, -you'll make a good trooper. All I expect is criminal indifference which I can take advantage of by working through the Old Boys Network, bribery, cutting false orders, black-marketing, and the other usual things. It's just that I had been doing a good job on you slobs in Camp Leon Trotsky, and the l east I expected was to be left alone to keep doing it, which was pretty damn stupid of me. I had better get cracking on my transfer now.” He slid to his feet and stowed the candy and gold-rimmed glasses away in a locked footlocker.
Bill, who in moments of shock found it hard to adjust instantly, was still bobbing his head and occasionally banging it with the heel of his hand. “Lucky thing,” he said, “for your chosen career that you were born deformed-I mean you have such nice teeth.” “Luck nothing,” Deathwish said, plunking one of his projecting tusks, “expensive as hell. Do you know what a genemutated, vat-grown, surgically-implanted set of two-inch tusks cost? I bet you don't know! I worked the summer vac for three years to earn enough to buy these-but I tell you they were worth it. The image, that's everything. I studied the old tapes of prehistoric spirit-breakers, and in their own crude way they were good.
Selected by physical type and low I. Q. of course, but they knew their roles.
Bulletheads, shaved clean, with scars, thick jaws, repulsive manners, hot pants, everything. I figured a small investment in the beginning would pay rich dividends in the end. And it was a sacrifice, believe me, you won't see many implanted tusks around! For a lot of reasons. Oh, maybe they are good for eating tough meat, but what the hell else? Wait until you try kissing your first girl… Now, get lost, Bill, I got things to do. See you around…” His last words faded in the distance, since Bill's well-conditioned reflexes had carried him down the corridor the instant he had been dismissed. When the spontaneous terror faded, he began to walk with a crafty roll, like a duck with a sprung kneecap, that he thought looked like an old spacesailor's gait. He was beginning to feel a seasoned hand and momentarily labored under the delusion that he knew more about the troopers than they knew about him. This pathetic misconception was dispelled instantly by the speakers on the ceiling, which belched and then grated their nasal voices throughout the ship.
“Now hear this, the orders direct from the Old Man himself, Captain Zekial, that you all have been waiting to hear. We're heading into action, so we are going to have a clean buckle-down fore and aft, stow all loose gear.” A low, heartfelt groan of pain echoed from every compartment of the immense ship.
There was plenty of latrine rumor and scuttlebutt about this first flight of the Chris Keeler, but none of it was true. The rumors were planted by undercover MPs and were valueless. About the only thing they could be sure of was that they might be going someplace because they seemed to be getting ready to go someplace. Even Tembo admitted to that as they lashed down fuses in the storeroom.
“Then again,” he added, “we might be doing all this just to fool any spies into thinking we are going someplace, when really some other ships are going there.” “Where?” Bill asked irritably, tying his forefinger into a knot and removing part of the nail when he pulled it free.
“Why anyplace at all, it doesn't matter.” Tembo was undisturbed by anything that did not bear on his faith. “But I do know where you are going, Bill.” “Where?” Eagerly. A perennial sucker for a rumor.
“Straight to hell unless you are saved.” “Not again…” Bill pleaded.
“Look there,” Tembo said temptingly, and projected a heavenly scene with golden gates, clouds, and a soft tom-tom beat in the background.
“Knock off that salvation-crap!” First Class Spleen shouted, and the scene vanished.
Something tugged slightly at Bill's stomach, but he ignored it as being just another of the symptoms sent up continually by his panic-stricken gut, which thought it was starving to death and hadn't yet realized that all its marvelous grinding and dissolving machinery had been condemned to a liquid diet. But Tembo stopped work and cocked his head to one side, then poked himself experimentally in the stomach.
“We're moving,” he said positively, “and going interstellar too. They've turned on the star-drive.” “You mean we are breaking through into sub-space and will soon experience the terrible wrenching at every fiber of our being?” “No, they don't use the old sub-space drive any more, because though a lot of ships broke through into sub-space with a fiber-wrenching jerk, none of them have yet broke back out. I read in the Trooper's Times where some mathematician said that there had been a slight error in the equations and that time was different in sub-space, but it was different faster not different slower, so that it will be maybe forever before those ships come out.” “Then we're going into hyper-space?” “No such thing.” “Or we're being dissolved into our component atoms and recorded in the memory of a giant computor who thinks we are somewhere else so there we are?” “Wow!” Tembo said, his-eyebrows crawling up to his hairline. “For a Zoroastrian farm boy you have some strange ideas! Have you been smoking or drinking something I don't know about?” “Tell me!” Bill pleaded. “If it's not one of them-what is it? We're going to have to cross interstellar space to fight the Chingers. How are we going to do it?” “It's like this.” Tembo looked around to make sure that First Class Spleen was out of sight, then put his cupped hands together to form a ball. “You make believe that my hands are the ship, just floating in space. Then the Bloater Drive is turned on-” “The what?” “The Bloater Drive. It's called that because it bloats things up. You know, everything is made up of little bitty things called electrons, protons, neutrons, trontrons, things like that, sort of held together by a kind of binding energy. Now, if you weaken the energy that holds things together- I forgot to tell you that also they are spinning around all the time like crazy, or maybe you already knew-you weaken the energy, and because they are going around so fast all the little pieces start to move away from each other, and the weaker the energy the farther apart they move. Are you with me so far?” “I think I am, but I'm not sure that I like it.” “Keep cool. Now-see my hands? As the energy gets weaker the ship gets bigger,” he moved his hands further apart. “It gets bigger and bigger until it is as big as a planet, then as big as a sun then a whole stellar system. The Bloater Drive can make us just as big as we want to be, then it's turned the other way and we shrink back to our regular size and there we are.” “Where are we?” “Wherever we want to be,” Tembo answered patiently.
Bill turned away and industriously rubbed shine-o onto a fuse as First Class Spleen sauntered by, a suspicious glint in his eye. As soon as he had turned the corner, Bill leaned over and hissed at Tembo.
“How can we be anywhere else than where we started? Getting bigger, getting smaller doesn't get us anyplace.” “Well, they're pretty tricky with the old Bloater Drive. The way I heard it it's like you take a rubber band and hold one end in each hand. You don't move your left hand, but you stretch the band out as far as it will go with your right hand. When you let the band shrink back again you keep your right hand steady and let go with your left. See? You never moved the rubber band, just stretched it and let it snap-but it has moved over. Like our ship is doing now.
It's getting bigger, but in one direction. When the nose reaches wherever we are going the stern will be wherever we were. Then we shrink, and bangol there we are. And you can get into heaven just that easily, my son, if only…” “Preaching on government time, Tembol” First Class Spleen howled from the other side of the fuse rack over which he was looking with a mirror tied to the end of a rod. “I'll have you polishing fuse clips for a year. You've been warned before.” They tied and polished in silence after that, until the little planet about as big as a tennis ball swam in through the bulkhead. A perfect little planet with tiny icecaps, cold fronts, cloud cover, oceans, and the works.
“What's that?” Bill yiped.
“Bad navigation,” Tembo scowled. “Backlash, the ship is slipping back a little on one end instead of going all the other way. No-no! Don't touch it, it can cause accidents sometimes. That's the planet we just left, Phigerinadon II.” “My home,” Bill sobbed, and felt the tears rise as the planet shrank to the size of a marble. “So long, Mom.” He waved as the marble shrank to a mote, then vanished.
After this the journey was uneventful, particularly since they could not feel when they were moving, did not know when they stopped, and had no idea where they were. Though they were sure they had arrived somewhere when they were ordered to strip the lashings from the fuses. The inaction continued for three watches, and then the General Quarters alarm sounded. Bill ran with the others, happy for the first time since he had enlisted. All the sacrifices, the hardships would not be in vain. He was seeing action at last against the dirty Chingers.
They stood in first position opposite the fuse racks, eyes intent on the red bands on the fuses that were called the fusebands. Through the soles of his boots Bill could feel a faint, distant tremor in the deck.
“What's that?” he asked Tembo out of the corner of his mouth.
“Main drive, not the Bloater Drive. Atomic engines. Means we must be maneuvering, doing something.” “But what?” “Watch them fusebandsl” First Class Spleen shouted.
Bill was beginning to sweat-then suddenly realized that it was becoming excruciatingly hot. Tembo, without taking his eyes from the fuses, slipped out of his clothes and folded them neatly behind him.
“Are we allowed to do that?” Bill asked, pulling at his collar. “What's happening?” “It's against regulations, but you have to strip or cook. Peel, son, or you will die unblessed. We must be going into action because the shields are up.
Seventeen force screens, one electromagnetic screen, a double-armored hull, and a thin layer of pseudo-living jelly that flows over and seals any openings.
With all that stuff there is absolutely no energy loss from the ship, nor any way to get rid of energy. Or heat. With the engines running and everyone sweating it can get pretty hot. Even hotter when the guns fire.” The temperature stayed high, just at the boundary of tolerability for hours, while they stared at the fusebands. At one point there was a tiny plink that Bill felt through his bare feet on the hot metal rather than heard.
“And what was that?” “Torpedoes being fired.” “At what?” Tembo just shrugged in answer and never let his vigilant gaze stray from the fusebands. Bill writhed with frustration, boredom, heat rash, and fatigue for another hour, until the all clear blew and a breath of cool air came in from the ventilators. By the time he had pulled his uniform back on Tembo was gone, and he trudged wearily back to his quarters.
There was a new mimeographed notice pinned to the bulletin board in the corridor and he bent to read its blurred message.
FROM: Captain Zekial TO: All Personnel RE: Recent engagement On 23/11-8956 this ship did participate in the destruction by atomic torpedo of the enemy installation 17KL-345 and did in concert with the other vessels of said flotilla Red Crutch accomplish its mission, it is thereby hereby authorized that all personnel of this vessel shall attach an Atomic Cluster to the ribbon denoting the Active Duty Unit Engagement Award, or however if this is their first mission of this type they will be authorized to wear the Unit Engagement Award.
NOTE: Some personnel have been observed with their Atomic Clusters inverted and this is WRONG and a COURTS-MARTIAL OFFENSE that is punishable by DEATH.
After the heroic razing of 17KL-345 there were weeks of training and drill to restore the battle-weary veterans to their usual fitness. But midway in these depressing months a new call sounded over the speakers, one Bill had never heard before, a clanging sound like steel bars being clashed together in a metal drum full of marbles. It meant nothing to him nor to the other new men, but it sent Tembo springing from his bunk to do a quick two-step Death Curse Dance with tom-tom accompaniment on his footlocker cover.
“Are you around the bend?” Bill asked dully from where he sprawled and read a tattered copy, of Real Ghoul Sex Fiend Shocker Comics with Built-in Sound Effects. A ghastly moan was keening from the page he was looking at.
“Don't you know?” Tembo asked. “Don't you KNOW That's mail call, my boy, the grandest sound in space.” The rest of the watch was spent in hurrying up and waiting standing in line, and all the rest. Maximum inefficiency was attached to the delivery of the mail, but finally, in spite of all barriers, the post was distributed and Bill had a precious spacial-postal from his mother. On one side of the card was a picture of the Noisome-Offal refinery just outside of his home town, and this alone was enough to raise a lump in his throat. Then, in the tiny square allowed for the message, his mother's pathetic scrawl had traced out: “Bad crop, in debt, robmule has packing glanders, hope you are the same-love, Maw.” Still, it was a message from home, and he read and reread it as they stood in line for chow. Tembo, just ahead of him, also had a card, all angels and churches, just what you would expect, and Bill was shocked when he saw Tembo read the card one last time then plunge it into his cup of dinner.
“What are you doing that for?” he asked, shocked.
“What else is mail good for?” Tembo hummed, and poked the card deeper.
“You just watch this now.” Before Bill's startled gaze, and right in front of his eyes, the card was starting to swell. The white surface broke off and fell away in tiny flakes while the brown insides grew and grew until they filled the cup and were an inch thick. Tembo fished the dripping slab out and took a large bite from one corner.
“Dehydrated chocolate,” he said indistinctly. “Good! Try yours.” Even before he spoke Bill had pushed his card down into the liquid and was fascinatedly watching it swell. The message fell away, but instead of brown a swelling white mass became visible.
“Taffy-or bread maybe,” he said, and tried not to drool.
The white mass was swelling, pushing against the sides of the cup, expanding out of the top. Bill grabbed the end and held it as it rose. Out and out it came until every drop of liquid had been absorbed and Bill held between his out-stretched hands a string of fat, connected letters over two yards long.
VOTE-FOR-HONEST-DEER-THE-TROOPERS'-FRIEND they read. Bill leaned over and bit out an immense mouthful of T. He spluttered and spat the damp shards onto the deck.
“Cardboard,” he said sadly. “Mother always shops for bargains. Even in dehydrated chocolate…” He reached for his cup for something to wash the old-newsprint taste out of his mouth, but it was empty.
Somewhere high in the seats of power, a decision was made, a problem resolved, an order issued. From small things do big things grow; a tiny bird turd lands on a snow-covered mountain slope, rolls, collects snow, becomes bigger and bigger, gigantic and more gigantic until it is a thundering mass of snow and ice, an avalanche, a ravening mass of hurtling death that wipes out an entire village. From small beginnings… Who knows what the beginning was here, perhaps the Gods do, but they are laughing. Perhaps the haughty, strutting peahen wife of some High Minister saw a bauble she cherished and with shrewish, spiteful tongue exacerbated her peacock husband until, to give himself peace, he promised her the trinket, then sought the money for its purchase. Perhaps this was a word in the Emperor's ear about a new campaign in the 77sub7th Zone, quiet now for years, a victory there-or even a draw if there were enough deaths-would mean a medal, an award, some cash. And thus did a woman's covetousness, like a tiny bird's turd, start the snowball of warfare rolling, mighty fleets gathering, ship after ship assembling, like a rock in a pool of water the ripples spread until even the lowliest were touched by its motion…
“We're heading for action,” Tembo said as he sniffed at his cup of lunch.
“They're loading up the chow with stimulants, pain depressors, saltpeter, and antibiotics.” “Is that why they keep playing the patriotic music?” Bill shouted so that he could be heard over the endless roar of bugles and drums that poured from the speakers. Tembo nodded.
“There is little time left to be saved, to assure your place in Samedi's legions-” “Why don't you talk to Bowb Brown?” Bill screamed. “I got tom-toms coming out of my ears! Every time I look at a wall I see angels floating by on clouds.
Stop bothering me! Work on Bowb-anybody who would do what he does with thoats would probably join up with your Voodoo mob in a second.” “I have talked with Brown about his soul, but the issue is still in doubt. He never answers me, so I am not sure if he has heard me or not. But you are different, my son, you show anger, which means you are showing doubt, and doubt is the first step to belief…” The music cut off in mid-peal, and for three seconds there was an echoing blast of silence that abruptly terminated.
“Now hear this. Attention all hands… stand by… in a few moments we will be taking you to the flagship for a on-the-spot report from the admiral… stand by…” The voice was cut off by the sounding of General Quarters but went on again when this hideous sound had ended. “… and here we are on the bridge of that gigantic conquistadore of the spacelanes, the twenty-mile-long, heavily armored, mightily gunned super battleship the Fairy Queen… the men on watch are stepping aside now and coming toward me in a simple uniform of spun platinum is the Grand Admiral of the Fleet, the Right Honorable Lord Archaeopteryx… Could you spare us a moment Your Lordship?
Wonderfull The next voice you hear will be… “ The next voice was a burst of music while the fusemen eyed their fusebands, but the next voice after that had all the rich adenoidal tones always heard from peers of the Empire.
“Lads-we're going into action! This, the mightiest fleet the galaxy has ever seen is heading directly toward the enemy to deliver the devastating blow that may win us the war. In my operations tank before me I see a myriad pinpoints of light, stretching as far as the eye can see, and each point of light-I tell you they are like holes in a blanket!-is not a ship, not a squadron-but an entire fleet! We are sweeping forward, closing in…” The sound of tom-toms filled the air, and on the fuseband that Bill was watching appeared a matched set of golden gates, swinging open.
“Tembo!” he screamed. “Will you knock that off I want to hear about the battle…” “Canned tripe,” Tembo sniffed. “Better to use the few remaining moments of this life that may remain to you to seek salvation. That's no admiral, that's a canned tape. I've heard it five times already, and they only play it to build morale before what they are sure is to be a battle with heavy losses. It never was an admiral, it's,from an old TV program…” “Yippee!” Bill shouted, and leaped forward. The fuse he was looking at crackled with a brilliant discharge around the clips, and at the same moment the fuseband charred and turned from red to black. “Unggh!” he grunted, then “Unggh! Ungghl Ungghl” in rapid succession, burning his palms on the still hot fuse, dropping it on his toe, and finally getting it into a fuseway. When he turned back Tembo had already clipped a fresh fuse into the empty clips.
“That was my fuse you shouldn't have…” there were tears in his eyes.
“Sorry. But by the rules I must help if I am free.” “Well, at least we're in action,” Bill said, back in position and trying to favor his bruised foot.
“Not in action yet, still too cold in here. And that was just a fuse breakdown, you can tell by the clip discharge, they do that sometimes when they get old.” “… massed armadas manned by heroic troopers…” “We could have been in combat.” Bill pouted.
“… thunder of atomic broadsides and lightning trails of hurtling torpedoes… “ “I think we are now. It does feel warmer, doesn't it, Bill? We had better undress; if it really is a battle we may get too busy.” “Let's go, let's go, down to the buff,” First Class Spleen barked, leaping gazellelike down the rows of fuses, clad only in a pair of dirty gym socks and his tattooed-on stripes and fouled-fuse insignia of rank. There was a sudden crackling in the air, and Bill felt the clipped-short stubs of his hair stirring in his scalp.
“What's that?” he yiped.
“Secondary discharge from that bank of fuses,” Tembo pointed. “It's classified as to what is happening, but I heard tell that it means one of the defense screens is under radiation attack, and as it overloads it climbs up the spectrum to green, to blue to ultraviolet until finally it goes black and the screen breaks down.” “That sounds pretty way out.” “I told you it was just a rumor. The material is classified…” “THERE SHE GOES!!” A crackling bang split the humid air of the fuse room, and a bank of fuses arced, smoked, burned black. One of them cracked in half, showering small fragments like shrapnel in every direction. The fusemen leaped,,grabbed the fuses, slipped in replacements with sweating hands, barely visible to each other through the reeking layers of smoke. The fuses were driven home, and there was a moment's silence, broken only by a plaintive bleating from the communications screen.
“Son of a bowb!” First Class Spleen muttered, kicking a fuse out of the way and diving for the screen. His uniform jacket was hanging on a hook next to it, and he struggled into this before banging the RECEIVE switch. He finished closing the last button just as the screen cleared. Spleen saluted, so it must have been an officer he was facing; the screen was edge-on to Bill, so he couldn't tell, but the voice had the quacking no-chin-and-plenty-of-teeth whine that he was beginning to associate with the officer class.
“You're slow in answering, First Class Spleen-maybe Second Class Spleen would be able to answer faster?” “Have pity, sir-I'm an old man.” He dropped to his knees in a prayerful attitude which took him off the screen.
“Get up, you idiot! Have you repaired the fuses after that last overload?” “We replace, sir, not repair…” “None of your technical gibberish, you swine! A straight answer!” “All in order, sir. Operating in the green. No complaints from anyone, your worship.” “Why are you out of uniform?” “I am in uniform, sir,” Spleen whined, moving closer to the screen so that his bare behind and shaking lower limbs could not be seen.
“Don't lie to me! There's sweat on your forehead. You aren't allowed to sweat in uniform. Do you. see me sweating? And I have a cap on too-at the correct angle. I'll forget it this time because I have a heart of gold. Dismissed.” “Filthy bowb!” Spleen cursed at the top of his lungs, tearing the jacket from his stifling body. The temperature was over 120 and still rising. “Sweat! They have air conditioning on the bridge-and where do you think they discharge the heat? In here! YEEOOW!!” Two entire banks of fuses blew out at the same time, three of the fuses exploding like bombs. At the same moment the floor under their feet bucked hard enough to actually be felt.
“Big trouble!” Tembo shouted. “Anything that is strong enough to feel through the stasis field must be powerful enough to flatten this ship like a pancake.
There go some morel” He dived for the bank and kicked a fuse clear of the clips and jammed in. a replacement It was an inferno. Fuses were exploding like aerial bombs, sending whistling particles of ceramic death through the air. There was a lightning crackle as a board shorted to the metal floor and a hideous scream, thankfully cut short, as the sheet of lightning passed through a fuse tender's body. Greasy smoke boiled and hung in sheets, making it almost impossible to see. Bill raked the remains of a broken fuse from the darkened clips and jumped for the replacement rack.
He clutched the ninety-pound fuse in his aching arms and had just turned back toward the boards, when the universe exploded.
All the remaining fuses seemed to have shorted at once, and the screaming bolt of crackling electricity crashed the length of the room. In its eye-piercing light and in a single, eternal moment Bill saw the flame sear through the ranks of the fuse tenders, throwing them about and incinerating them like particles of dust in an open fire. Tembo crumpled and collapsed, a mass of seared flesh; a flying length of metal tore First Class Spleen open from neck to groin in a single hideous wound.
“Look at that vent in Spleen!” Bowb shouted, then screamed as a ball of lightning rolled over him and turned him to a blackened husk in a fraction of a second.
By chance, a mere accident, Bill was holding the solid bulk of the fuse before him when the flame struck. It washed over his left arm, which was on the outside of the fuse, and hurled its flaming weight against the thick cylinder.
The force hit Bill, knocked him back toward the reserve racks of fuses, and rolled him end over end flat on the floor while the all-destroying sheet of fire crackled inches above his head. It died away as suddenly as it had come, leaving behind nothing but smoke, heat, the scorched smell of roasted flesh, destruction, and death, death, death. Bill crawled painfully for the hatchway, and nothing else moved down the blackened and twisted length of the fuse room.
The compartment below seemed just as hot, its air as bereft of nourishment for his lungs as the one he had just quitted. He crawled on, barely conscious of the fact that he moved on two lacerated knees and one bloody hand. His other arm just hung and dragged, a twisted and blackened length of debris, and only the blessings of deep shock kept him from screaming with unbearable pain.
He crawled on, over a sill, through a passageway. The air was clearer here and much cooler: he sat up andinhaled its blessed freshness. The compartment was familiar-yet unfamiliar-he blinked at it, trying to understand why. Long and narrow, with a curved wall that had the butt ends of immense guns projecting from it. The main battery, of course, the guns Chinger spy Eager Beager had photographed. Different now, the ceiling closer to the deck, bent and dented, as if some gigantic hammer had beat on it from the outside. There was a man slumped in the gunner's seat of the nearest weapon.
“What happened?” Bill asked, dragging himself over to the man and clutching him by the shoulder. Surprisingly enough the gunner only weighed a few pounds, and he fell from the seat, light as a husk, with a shriveled parchment face as though not a drop of liquid were left in his body.
“Dehydrator Ray,” Bill grunted. “I thought they only had them on TV.” The gunner's seat was padded and looked very comfortable, far more so than the warped steel deck: Bill slid into the recently vacated position and stared with unseeing eyes at. the screen before him. Little moving blobs of light.
In large letters, just above the screen, was printed: GREEN LIGHTS OUR SHIPS, RED LIGHTS ENEMY. FORGETTING THIS IS A COURTS-MARTIAL OFFENSE. “I won't forget,” Bill mumbled, as he started to slide sideways from the chair. To steady himself he grabbed a large handle that rose before him, and when he did a circle of light with an X in it moved on the screen. It was very interesting.
He put the circle around one of the green lights, then remembered something about a courtsmartial offense. He jiggled it a bit, and it moved over to. a red light, with the X right over the light. There was a red button on top of the handle, and he pressed it because it looked like the kind of button that is made to be pressed. The gun next to him went wh f f le… in a very subdued way, and the red light went out. Not very interesting; he let go of the handle.
“Oh, but you are a fighting fool!” a voice said, and, with some effort, Bill turned his head. A man stood in the doorway wearing a burned and tattered uniform still hung with shreds of gold braid. He weaved forward. “I saw it,” he breathed. “Until my dying day I won't forget it. A fighting fooll What guts!
Fearless! Forward against the enemy, no holds barred, don't give up the ship…” “What the bowb you talking about?” Bill asked thickly.
“A hero!” the officer said, pounding Bill on the back; this caused a great deal of pain and was the last straw for his conscious mind, which let go the reins of command and went away to sulk. Bill passed out.
“Now won't you be a nice trooper-wooper and drink your dinner…” The warn notes of the voice insinuated themselves into a singularly repulsive dream that Bill was only too glad to leave, and, with a great deal of effort, he managed to heave his eyes open. A quick bit of blinking got them into focus, and he saw before him a cup on a tray held by a white hand attached to a white arm connected to a white uniform well stuffed with female breasts. With a guttural animal growl Bill knocked the tray aside and hurled himself at the dress. He didn't make it, because his left arm was wrapped up in something and hung from wires, so that he spun around in the bed like an impaled beetle, still uttering harsh cries. The nurse shrieked and fled.
“Glad to see that you are feeling better,” the doctor said, whipping him straight in the bed with a practiced gesture and numbing Bill's still flailing right arm with a neat judo blow. “I'll pour you some more dinner, and you drink it right down, then we'll let your buddies in for the unveiling, they're all waiting outside.” The tingling was dying from his arm, and he could wrap his fingers about the cup now. He sipped. “What buddies? What unveiling? What's going on here?” he asked suspiciously.
Then the door was opened, and the troopers came in. Bill searched their faces, looking for buddies, but all he saw were ex-welders and strangers.
Then he remembered. “Bowb Brown cooked!” he screamed. “Tembo broiled! First Class Spleen guttedl They're all dead!” He hid under the covers and moaned horribly.
“That's no way for a hero to act,” the doctor said, dragging him back onto the pillows and tucking the covers under his arms. “You're a hero, trooper, the man whose guts, ingenuity, integrity, stick-to-itiveness, fighting spirit, and deadly aim saved the ship. All the screens were down, the power room destroyed, the gunners dead, control lost, and the enemy dreadnaught zeroing in for the kill when you appeared like an avenging angel, wounded and near to death, and with your last conscious effort fired the shot heard round the fleet, the single blast that disemboweled the enemy and saved our ship, the grand old lady of the fleet, Christine Keeler.” He handed a sheet of paper to Bill. “I am of course quoting from the official report; me myself, I think it was just a lucky accident, You're just jealous,” Bill sneered, already falling in love with his new image.
“Don't get Freudian with me!” the doctor screamed, then snuffled pitifully.
“I always wanted to be a hero, but all I do is wait hand and foot on heroes.
I'm taking that bandage off now.” He unclipped the wires that held up Bill's arm and began to unwind the bandages while the troopers crowded around to watch.
“How is my arm, Doc?” Bill was suddenly worried.
“Grilled like a chop. I had to cut it off.”
“Then what is this?” Bill shrieked, horrified.
“Another arm that I sewed on. There were lots of them left over after the battle. The ship had over 42 per cent casualties, and I was really cutting and chopping and sewing, I tell you.” The last bandage fell away and the troopers ahhhed with delight.
“Say, that's a mighty fine arm!” “Make it do something.” “And a damn nice seam there at the shoulder-look how neat the stitches are!” “Plenty of muscles, too, and good and long, not like the crummy little short one he has on the other side.” “Longer and darker-that's a great skin color!” “It's Tembo's arm!” Bill howled. “Take it away!” He squirmed across the bed but the arm came after him. They propped him up again on the pillows.
“You're a lucky bowb, Bill, having a good arm like that. And your buddy's arm too.” “We know that he wanted you to have it.” “You'll always have something to remember him by.” It really wasn't a bad arm. Bill bent it and flexed the fingers, still looking at it suspiciously. It felt all right. He reached out with it and grabbed a trooper's arm and squeezed. He could feel the man's bones grating together while he screamed and writhed. Then Bill looked closer at the hand and began to shout curses at the doctor.
“You stupid sawbones! You thoat doctor! Some big job-this is a right arms” “So it's a right arm-so what?” “But you cut off my left arm! Now I have two right arms…” “Listen, there was a shortage of left arms. I'm no miracle worker. I do my best and all I get are complaints. Be happy I didn't sew on a leg.” He leered evilly. “Or even better I didn't sew on a…” “It's a good arm, Bill,” said the trooper who was rubbing his recently crushed forearm. “And you're really lucky too. Now you can salute with either arm, no one else can do that.” “You're right,” Bill said humbly. “I never thought of that. I'm really very lucky.” He tried a salute with his left-right arm, and the elbow whipped up nicely and the fingertips quivered at his eyebrow. All the troopers snapped to attention and returned the salute. The door crashed open, and an officer poked his head in.
“Stand easy, men-this is just an informal visit by the Old Man.” “Captain Zekial coming herel” “I've never seen the Old Man…” The troopers chippered like birds and were as nervous as virgins at a defloration ceremony. Three more officers came through the door and finally a male nurse leading a ten-year-old moron wearing a bib and a captain's uniform.
“Uhh… hi ya fellows… “ the captain said.
“The captain wishes to pay his respects to you all,” the first lieutenant said crisply.
“Is dat da guy in da bed…?” “And particularly wishes to pay his personal respects to the hero of the hour.” “… Dere was sometin' else but I forgot…” “And he furthermore wishes to inform the valiant fighter who saved our ship that he is being raised in grade to Fuse Tender First Class, which increase in rank includes an automatic re-enlistment for seven years to be added to his original enlistment, and that upon dismissal from the hospital he is to go by first available transportation to the Imperial Planet of Helior, there to receive the hero's award of the Purple Dart with Coalsack Nebula Cluster from the Emperor's own hand.” “… I think I gotta go to da bathroom…” “But now the exigencies of command recall him to the bridge, and he wishes you all an affectionate farewell.” Bill saluted with both arms, and the troopers stood at attention until the captain and his officers had gone, then the doctor dismissed the troopers as well.
“Isn't the Old Man a little young for his post?” Bill asked. “Not as young as some,” the doctor scratched through his hypodermic needles looking for a particularly dull one for an injection. “You have to remember that all captains have to be of the nobility and even a large nobility gets stretched damn thin over a galactic empire. We take what we can get.” He found a crooked needle and clipped it to the cylinder.
“Affirm, so he's young, but isn't he also a little stupid for the job?” “Watch that lese-majesty stuff, bowb! You get an empire that's a couple of thousand years old, and you get a: nobility that keeps inbreeding, and you get some of the crunched genes and defective recessives coming out and you got a group of people that-are a little more exotic than most nut houses. There's nothing wrong with the Old Man that a new I. Q. wouldn't curel You should have seen the captain of the last ship I was on…” he shuddered and jabbed the needle viciously into Bill's flesh. Bill screamed, then gloomily watched the blood drip from the hole after the hypodermic had been withdrawn.
The door closed, and Bill was alone, looking at the blank wall and his future. He was a Fuse Tender First Class, and that was nice. But the compulsory re-enlistment for seven years was not so nice. His spirits dropped. He wished he could talk to some of his old buddies, then remembered that they were all dead, and his spirits dropped even further. He tried to cheer himself up but could think of nothing to be cheery about until he discovered that he could shake hands with himself. This made him feel a little bit better.
He lay back on the pillows and shook hands with himself until he fell asleep.