The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted

Chapter 8

Under any other circumstances I would have enjoyed the ride in this unusual airship. It was shaped like a large cigar and undoubtedly contained light gas of some kind. Slung beneath the lifting body was a metal cabin tastefully decorated outside with a frieze of skulls and bones. Ducted fans on the cabin were angled to force it aloft and forward: the view from the window must have been fascinating. But the windows that we had glimpsed from the outside were all forward in the pilot's compartment, while we draftees were jammed into a windowless metal chamber. The seats were made from molded plastic surfaced with uneven bumps and hideously uncomfortable - but at least they were seats. I dropped into one and sighed with relief. In all the hours at the reception center the only time we had been off our feet was during the bloodletting. The plastic was cool through the thin paper fabric of the purple disposable uniform, the deck hard through the cardboard soles fastened at the end of its legs. The only pocket in this hideous garment was a pouch at the front into which we had shoved our bags of personal possessions so that we all resembled demented purple marsupials. I felt depressed. But at least I had company. We were all depressed.

"I never been away from home before," the recruit to my right sniveled, then sniffed and wiped his damp nose on his sleeve.

"Well I have." I said in my heartiest, most jovial tones. Not that I felt either hearty or jovial, but bucking up his spirits might help mine as well. "And it is a lot better than home."

"Food will be rotten." he whined self-indulgently. "Nobody can cook like my Mom. She makes the best cepkukoj in the whole world."

Onion cakes? What sort of bizarre diet had this stripling enjoyed? "Put that all behind you," I chirped. "If the army bakes cepkukoj they will be foul, count on that. But think of the other pleasures. Plenty of exercise, fresh air - and you can curse all the time, drink alcohol and talk smutty about girls!"

He blushed ardently, his splayed ears glowing like banners. "I wouldn't talk about girls! And I know how to drink. Me and Jojo went behind the barn once and drank beer and cursed and threw up."

"Whee—" I sighed and was saved from future futile conversation by the appearance of a sergeant. He slammed open the door from the front cabin and roared his command. "Alright you kretenoj - on your feet!"

He assured instant obedience by hitting a button on the wall that collapsed our seats. There were screams and moans of pain, writhing purple confusion on the deck as the recruits fell on top of each other. I was the only one standing and I caught the full force of the sergeant's sizzling glare.

"What are you - a wise guy or sometin'?"

"No, sir! Just obeying orders, sir!" Saying this I leaped into the air slapping my arms to my sides, stamping my feet heavily as I landed, then delivered a snappy salute - so snappy I almost put my eye out. The sergeant's eyes bulged in return at this display before he was lost from sight by the rising, milling bodies.

"Quiet! Attention! Hands at sides, feet together, stomachs in, chests out, chins back, eyes forward - and stop breathing!"

The purple ranks swayed and writhed into this absurd military stance, then were still. Silence descended as the sergeant glared around with dark suspicion.

"Did I hear someone breathe? No breathing until I tell you to. The first cagalhead who breathes gets my fist where it will do the most good."

The silence lengthened. Purple figures stirred as incipient asphyxiation took hold. One recruit moaned and fell to the deck; I breathed silently through my nostrils. There was a gasp as one of the lads could hold out no longer. The sergeant surged forward and the spot where a fist will do the most good turned out to be the pit of the stomach. The victim screamed and fell and all the others gasped in life-giving air."

"That was a little lesson!" the sergeant screeched. "Did you get the message?"

"Yes," I muttered under my breath. "You're a sadomasochist."

"The lesson is that I give the orders, you obey them - or you get stomped." Having delivered this repulsive communication his face writhed, his lips pulled back to reveal yellowed teeth; it took a long moment for me to realize this was supposed to be a smile.

"Sit down men, make yourselves comfortable." On the steel deck? The seats were still stowed. I sat with the rest while the sergeant amicably patted the roll of fat that hung over his belt. "My name is Klutz, Drill-sergeant Klutz. But you will not address me by my name which is for the use of those of equal rank or higher. You will call me sergeant, sir, or master. You will be humble, obedient, reverent and quiet. If you are not you will be punished. I will not tell you what the punishment will be because I have eaten recently and do not wish to upset my stomach." A stir of fear passed through the audience at the thought of what might possibly upset that massive gut.

"One punishment is usually enough to break the spirit of even the most reluctant recruit. However, occasionally, a recruit will need a second punishment. Still more rarely a hardened resister will require a third punishment. But there is no third punishment. Would you like to know why there is no third punishment?"

The red eyes glared down and we all wished that we were someplace, anyplace, else at this moment.

"Since you are too dim to ask why, I will tell you. Third time is out. Third time is being stuffed, kicking and screaming and begging for your mommy, into the dehydration chamber where ninety-nine point nine nine percent of all your precious bodily fluids will be removed with a dry whishing sound. Do you know what you will look like then? You will look like this!" '

He reached into his pocket and took out a tiny dehydrated figure of a recruit in a tiny dehydrated uniform, the features on its tiny face fixed forever in lines of terror. Moans of fear sighed from the soldiers and there were a number of thuds as the weakest dropped unconscious. Sergeant Klutz smiled.

"Yes, you will look just like this. Your tiny dry body will then be hung on the barracks bulletin board for a month as a warning to the others. After that your body will be put in a padded mailing envelope and sent to your parents, along with a toy shovel to assist in burial. Now - are there any questions?"

"Please, sir," a quavering voice asked. "Is the dehydration process instant and painless or drawn-out and terrible?"

"Good question. After your first day in the army - do you have any doubt which it will be?"

More moans and unconscious thuds followed. The sergeant nodded approval. "Alright. Let me tell you what happens next. We are going to the RTCS at MMB. That means the Recruit Training Camp Slimmarco at Mortstertoro Military Base. You will take your basic training. This training will turn you from feeble civilian wimps into sturdy, loyal, reverent soldiers. Some of you will wash out of basic training and will be buried with full military honors. Remember that. There is no way back. You will become good soldiers or you will become dead. You will understand that the military is hard but fair."

"What's fair about it?" a recruit gasped and the sergeant kicked him in the head.

"What is fair is that you all have an equal chance. You can get through basic or wash out. Now I will tell you something." He leaned forward and breathed out a blast of breath so foul that the nearest draftees dropped unconscious. There was no humor in his smile now. "The truth is that I want you to wash out. I will do everything I can to make you wash out. Every recruit sent home in a wheelchair or a box saves the government money and lowers taxes. I want you to wash out now instead of in combat after years of expensive training. Do we understand each other?"

If silence means assent, we certainly did. I admired the singleminded clarity of the technique. I did not like the military, but I was beginning to understand it. "Any questions?"

My stomach rumbled loudly in the silence and the words popped from my mouth. "Yes, sir. When do we eat?"

"You got a strong stomach, recruit. Most here are too sickened by military truth to eat."

"Only thinking of my military duty, sir. I must eat to be strong to be a good soldier."

He shuffled this around about in his dim brain, little piggy eyes glaring at me the while. Finally the projecting jaw nodded into the rolls of fat beneath the chin.

"Right. You just volunteered to get the rations. Through that door in the aft bulkhead. Move."

I moved. And thought. Bad news: I was in the army and liked nothing about it. Good news: we were going to Mortstertoro base where Bibs had last seen Captain Garth-Zennar-Zennor or whatever his name was. He was on top of my revenge list - but right now I was plugging away at the top of my survival list. Garth would have to wait. I opened the door which revealed a small closet containing a single box. It was labeled YUK-E COMBAT RATIONS. This had to be it. But when I lifted the box it seemed suspiciously light to feed this shipload of incipient soldiers.

"Pass them out, kreteno, don't admire the box." the sergeant growled, and I hurried to obey. The YUK-E rations did appear pretty yuky. Gray bricks sealed in plastic covers. I went among my purple peers and each of them grabbed one out, fondling the bricks with some suspicion.

"These rations will sustain life for one entire day." the rasping voice informed us. "Each contains necessary vitamins, minerals, protein and saltpeter that the body needs or the army wants you to have. They are opened by inserting your thumb nail into the groove labeled «thumbnail here». The covering will fall away intact and you will preserve it intact. You will eat your ration. When you are finished you will go to the wall here and to the water tap at this position and you will drink from the plastic cover. You will drink quickly because one minute after being moistened the cover will lose its rigidity and will shrink. You will then roll up the cover and save it for display at inspection because it will now be transformed into a government issue contraceptive which you will not be able to use for a very long time, if ever, but which you will still be responsible for. Now - eat!"

I ate. Or tried to. The ration had the consistency of baked clay but not half as much flavor. I chewed and gagged and swallowed and managed to choke it all down before rushing to the water spigot. I filled the plastic cover and drank quickly and refilled it, emptying it just as it went limp and flaccid. I sighed and rolled it up and stowed it in my marsupial pocket and made room for the next victim at the tap.

While we had been gnawing our food the collapsed seats had snapped back into position. I eased myself carefully into the nearest, but it did not give way. It appeared impossible, but the combination of food and near-terminal exhaustion worked their unsubtle magic and I crashed. I could hear myself snoring even before I fell asleep.

The bliss of unconsciousness ended just as I might have expected; the seats fell away and dropped us into a writhing, moaning mass on the deck. We stumbled groggily to our feet under the verbal lashing of the sergeant and were trying to stand in a military posture as the deck vibrated beneath our feet and became still.

"Welcome to the first day of the rest of your new life," the sergeant chortled, and wails of anguish followed his words. The exit sprang open, admitting a chill and dusty blast, and we stumbled out wearily to see our new home.

It was not very impressive. One of the red and pallid suns was just setting into the cloud of dust on the horizon. I could tell by the thin and chill air that the base had been built at some altitude, a high plateau perhaps. Which guaranteed good flying weather and maximum discomfort for the troops. The ground trembled as a deepspacer took off in the distance, its exhaust blast brighter than the setting sun. The sergeant snarled us into a ragged formation and we shivered in the downblast of our departing airship. He waved a clipboard in our direction.

"I will now call the roll." You will be called by your military name and will forget that you ever had any other. Your military name is your given name followed by the first four numbers of your serial number. When your name is called you will enter the barracks behind me and proceed to your assigned bunk and await further instructions. Gordo7590 - bunk one…"

I looked crosseyed at my dogtag until I could make out the number. Then stared numbly at the mud-colored barracks until the voice of our master called out Jak5138. With dragging feet I passed through the doorway over which was inscribed THROUGH THIS PORTAL PASS THE BEST DAMNED SOLDIERS IN THE WORLD. Who, as the expression goes, was kidding whom?

The floor was stone, still damp from the last scrubbing. The walls concrete, clean and still wet. I let my horrified gaze move up to the ceiling and, yes, it was damp as well, the light bulbs still dripping. How this maniacal cleansing was carried out I had no idea - though I was certain that I would find out far too soon.

My bunk was, naturally, the top one in a tier of three. It was strung with wire netting, though a bulky roll at its head hinted at softer pleasures.

"Welcome to your new home," the sergeant grated with false jollity as we drew our fatigued bodies up into an imitation of attention. "Note how your bedding roll is stowed when you unroll it, because it will be rolled in that stowed position at all times, except when you're sleeping - which will be the minimum amount of time needed to stay alive. Or less. Your footlockers are imbedded in the floor between the bunks and are opened and closed by me with this master switch."

He touched a stud on his belt and there was a grating sound as the mini-graves opened up in the floor. One recruit, who was standing in the wrong position, screamed as he fell into his.

"Lights out in fifteen minutes. Bedding to be unrolled but not utilized before that time. Before retiring you will watch an orientation film that will acquaint you with tomorrow's orders of the day. You will watch and listen with full attention, after which you will retire and pray to the deity or deities of your choice and cry yourselves to sleep thinking about your mommies. Dismissed."

Dismissed. The door slammed behind our striped overseer and we were alone. Dismissed was the right word for it. Dismissed from the warmth and the light of the real world, sent to this gray military hell not of our choosing. Why is mankind so inhuman to its own species? If you were caught treating a horse in this manner you would probably be put in jail, or shot. Rustling cut the silence as we opened our bedrolls. To reveal to each of us a thin mattress and even thinner blanket. A pneumatic pillow as well that could only be inflated with lusty puffing which, I was sure, would go flat by morning. While we were unrolling and blowing TV screens dropped down silently behind us in the passageway between the bunks. Brassy military music blared and the image of an officer with a severe speech impediment appeared and began to read out totally incomprehensible instructions which we all ignored. I dumped the contents of my marsupial pocket into the subterranean footlocker and climbed and crawled, still dressed, into the bunk. My eyes blurred with fatigue as the voice droned on and I was nine-tenths asleep when a blast of light and sound jerked me awake. A grim military figure in black uniform glared angrily from the screen.

"Attention," it said. "This program has been interrupted, as have all programs throughout Nevenkebla on all stations to bring you the following important announcement." He scowled at the sheet of paper he held and shook it angrily.

"A dangerous spy is at large in our country tonight. It is known that he entered the harbor of Marhaveno yesterday morning disguised as a laborer on one of the ships from Brastyr. A search was made of the harbor but he was not found. The search was extended today and it was discovered that the spy entered a pleasure vessel in the adjoining harbor and stole a number of items."

A deathly chill stirred the hairs on the nape of my neck as he held up a bundle of clothes.

"These were found buried in the sand and have been identified as the clothing worn by the spy. The entire area has been sealed, curfew declared and every building is now being carefully searched. The public is ordered to be on the lockout for this man. He may still be wearing these items of clothing that he stole. If you have seen anyone dressed like this notify the police or security forces at once."

His image vanished and was replaced by a carefully done computer simulation of the clothing I had borrowed from the boat. These rotated slowly in space - then appeared on a man's figure which the computer strolled about the screen. The face was a blank but I knew all too well what face would soon appear there.

How long would it take them to identify me, to track me down, discover that I was now in the army, to follow me here?

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?