“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
