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.