There was a grating thud as the barracks door locked and the lights went out. The chill spread down my body and my heart thudded with panic and I stared, sightless and horrified into the darkness.
How long?
Chapter 9
I would like to say that it was nerves of steel and fierce self-control that enabled me to fall asleep, after hearing the announcement that the entire country was turned out and searching for me. But that would be a lie. Not that I mind telling a lie or two, white lies really, to further myself in this universe. After all a disguise is a lie and continuous lying, sincere lying, is the measure of a good disguise. That went with the job. But one must not lie to oneself. No matter how distasteful the truth it must be faced and accepted. So, no lies; I fell asleep because I was horizontal in the dark, fairly warm and totally exhausted. Panic ran way behind exhaustion in the sleepy-time race. I slept, hard and enthusiastically, and awoke in the darkness only when a strange noise cut through my serious sack time.
It was a distant rustle, like waves on the beach - or leaves blowing in the wind. No, not that, but something else equally familiar. An amplified sound I thought numbly, like an ancient and worn recording being played, just the background scratching without the recording itself.
Theory was proved correct an instant later as a blurred and distorted recording of a bugle thundered through the barracks just as all the lights came on. The barracks door crashed open and, as though summoned from some dark hell by this hellish sound and light, the sergeant entered screaming at the top of his lungs.
'Get out and get under! Off your bunks and on your feet! Roll bedding! Dip into your footlockers! Remove shaving gear! Then on the double to the latrine! You're late, you're late! Barracks will be washed in twenty seconds precisely! Move it - move it - move it!' We moved it, but we really didn't have enough time. I fought my way through the latrine door with the other frenzied purple figures just as the footlockers slammed shut and the barracks wash-heads let go. At that precise instant the sergeant stepped backward and slammed the door. From all sides torrents of cold water gushed forth, catching at least half of the recruits still on the run. They followed us into the latrine, soaked and shivering, their disposable uniforms beginning to dispose in long rents and tears. Crying and sniveling they pushed forward like sheep. Sheep struggling for survival. There was a limited number of sanitary facilities and all were in use. I forced my way through the mob until I could glimpse my face in the corner of a distorted mirror, almost did not recognize myself with the dark-circled eyes and pallid skin. But there was no time to get organized, to take stock, to think coherently. At some lower level I realized that it had all been planned this way, to keep the recruits off-balance, insecure, frightened - open for brainwashing or destruction. This realization percolated up to a slightly more conscious level and with it a growing anger.
Jimmy diGriz does not destruct! I was going to beat them at their own game, until I beat it out of here. It didn't matter that the entire country was looking for me - until they tracked me to this military cesspit all I had to do was survive. And survive I would! The supersonic razor screeched in my brain as it blasted my overnight whiskers free. Then, while the automated toothbrush crawled around inside my mouth, I managed to get a hand under a running faucet, scrubbed my face clean, ignored the air-dryer and pelted back to my bunk over the puddled floor. I stowed my kit away just as the footlocker flew open, then spun about as Sergeant Klutz popped through the door again.
'Fall out for rollcall!' he bellowed as I rushed by him into the night. I snapped to attention under the single glaring light as he turned and approached me with grim suspicion.
'Are you some kind of joker or something?' he shouted, his face so close to mine that his spittle dotted my skin.
'No, sir! I'm raring to go, sir. My daddy was a soldier and my granddaddy and they told me that the best thing to be was a soldier and the highest rank in the army was sergeant! That's why I'm here.' I stopped shouting and leaned forward and whispered. 'Don't tell the others, sir, they'll only sneer. But I wasn't drafted - I volunteered.'
He was silent and I risked a quick look at his face. Could it be? Was it, there, a drop of liquid in the corner of one eye? Had my tissue of lies touched some residual spot of emotion buried deep within the alcohol-sodden, sadistic flesh of his repulsive body? I couldn't be sure. At least he did not strike me down on the spot, but turned on his heel and rushed into the barracks to boot out the stragglers.
As the moaning victims stumbled into line I put some thought to my future. What should I do? Nothing, came the quick answer. Until you are tracked down, Jim, stay invisible in the ranks. And learn all that you can about this military jungle. Watch and learn and keep your eyes open. The more you understand about this operation the safer you will be. Then, when you run, it will be plan not panic that guides you. Good advice. Hard on the nerves to follow, but good advice nevertheless.
After repeated mumbled mistakes, mispronunciation of names - is it really possible to mispronounce Bil? - the sergeant finished stumbling and muttering his way through the rollcall and led the way to the mess hall. As we approached it, and the smells of real food washed over us, the splattering of saliva on the pavement sounded like rain. Other recruits stumbled up through the night and joined us in the long line leading into the warmth of this gustatory heaven. When I finally carried my heaped-high tray to the table I found it hard to believe. All right so maybe it was grundgeburgers with caramel sauce, but it was food, hot, solid food. I didn't eat it - I insufflated it and went back for more. For one moment I actually thought that the army was not so bad after all. Then I instantly banished the thought.
They were feeding us because they wanted to keep us alive. The food was nasty and cheap - but it would sustain life. So if we washed out it would not be because of the diet but because of our own intrinsic insufficiency or lack of will. If we got through basic training each of us would supply one hot and relatively-willing body for the war machine. Nice thinking.
I hated the bastards. And went back for thirds.
Breakfast was followed by calisthenics - to aid the digestion or destroy it. Sergeant Klutz double-timed us to a vast, windswept plain where other recruits were already being put through their paces by muscular instructors. Our new leader was waiting for us, steely-eyed and musclebound, the spread of his shoulders so wide that his head was disproportionately small. Or maybe he just had a pinhead. Speculation about this vanished as his roar rattled the teeth in my jaw.
'What's this, what's this? You kretenoj are almost a minute late!'
'Pigs, that what they is.' our loyal sergeant said, taking a long black cigar from his pocket. 'Little trotters in the trough. Couldn't tear them away from their chow.' Some recruits gasped at this outright lie, but the wiser of us were learning and stayed silent. The one thing that we could not expect was justice. We were late getting here because our porcine sergeant could not move any faster.
'Is that so?' the instructor said, his beady eyes swiveling in his pinhead like glowing marbles. 'Then we will see if we cannot work some of that food off of these malingering cagal-kopfs. ON THE GROUND! Now - we do fifty pushups. Begin!'
This seemed like a good idea since I usually did a hundred pushups every morning to keep in shape. And the chill wind was blowing through the rents in our disposable uniforms. Five. I wondered when we would be issued with something more permanent. Fifteen.
By twenty there was plenty of wavering and grunting around me and I was warming up nicely. By thirty over half of the pipe-stemmed striplings had collapsed in the dust. Sergeant Klutz dropped cigar ashes on the nearest prostrate back. We continued. When we reached fifty just I and the muscular lad who hated injections were the only ones left. Pinhead glared at us. 'Another fifty,' he snarled.
The weightlifter puffed on for twenty more before he groaned to a halt. I finished the course and got another glare and a snarl.
'Is that all, sir?' I asked sweetly. 'Couldn't we do another fifty?'
'On your feet!' he screamed. 'Legs wide, arms extended, after me. One, two, three, four. And one more time…'
By the time the exercises were finished we had worked up a good sweat, the sergeant had finished his cigar - and two of the recruits were collapsed in the dust. One of them lay beside me, groaning and clutching his midriff.
