“But we’re giving them guns that won’t fire!”
“And it’s okay to give them to us?” Papa hurried on while the delivery man was hung up on common sense. “Let their quartermaster find that out. It’s his worry, not mine—or yours.”
“That makes just enough sense to sound wrong.” The delivery man frowned, eyes straying to his load. “So what do I do if he turns ‘em down?”
“You take ‘em back to Stores, with his note saying why he won’t take delivery.”
“And let his tail get in the sling, not yours?” The deliveryman turned back. “I think I understand how you’re thinking now, Sergeant.”
Papa shrugged. “Maybe nobody’s in a sling. Maybe the quartermaster will send ‘em back to the factory.”
“Come on, Sarge! You know factories don’t take things back!”
“Maybe. Or maybe nobody ever sends ‘em back.” Papa grinned. “Come on, Corporal—take a chance. Start a revolution.”
“Start it? You did that. All I can do is get caught in it! Give me one reason why I should, Sarge—just one!”
“For the guys on the line.”
The delivery man just stared at him for a moment. Then he said, “I did say just one, didn’t I?”
“Want another one?”
“That’ll do.” The deliveryrnan turned away and swung another crate of rifles out of the truck, slamming it down at Papa’s feet. “Have another, Sarge. One for the road.” He picked up the crate of duds and swung them back aboard the truck, then turned to find Papa calmly stripping the packing off one of the rifles from the new crate. “Aw, come on! Don’t tell me you’re not going to accept delivery on that one, too!”
“Oh, sure I will.” The Sergeant slapped a new clip into the rifle and raised it to his shoulder. “Just as soon as I make sure it works.”
He had to salute; it was a lieutenant. He even had to try to stand up behind his desk, though there wasn’t really room enough.
“At ease.” But the lieutenant’s frown didn’t seem to inspire a relaxed attitude. “What kind of racket are you running, Sergeant?”
“Sir?” Papa kept his eyes on the lieutenant’s, but noticed the quartermaster’s patch on his pocket. Not that he needed it—he knew the clerks from his own brigade.
“All the rejections, Sarge! You keep refusing deliveries!”
“Beg pardon, sir. I’ve never sent anything back.”
“No, but you’ve sent ‘em on to other companies! What’s the matter, Sergeant—didn’t you ever stop to think that every crate of good material you get, is one less for another company?”
“Not my problem,” Papa said, straight-faced.
“No, but you sure as hell make it mine!” The lieutenant’s face reddened.
“It’s simple.” The captain spread his hands. “You keep rejecting the duds, and instead of each company having a crate or two to scrap, you don’t have any, and all the others have more. Let it go long enough, and the Tenth will be the only company in the battalion whose rifles work.”
Papa dug his heels in while his stomach sank. “Just doing my job right, sir.”
“Yes, you are.” The colonel picked up a stylus and bounced its tip on the desk. “And you know there’s only one thing to do about it, don’t you?”
The sunken stomach turned into a hollow pit, but Papa still didn’t back down, even though visions of civilian clothes flitted through his head. “Yes, sir. I know.”
“Good.” The captain nodded. “Then go back and clean out your desk, Sarge, and move your gear over to company HQ. You just became battalion quartermaster.”
Papa stared, unable to believe his ears. “Sir?”
“What’s the matter?” The captain looked up with a frown. “Don’t understand orders?”
“But, sir. There’s a lieutenant in that job!”
“Good point—you just got promoted. Congratulations, Lieutenant Stuart.”
The room seemed to become a litle unstable. “Uh—Sir! Thank you! I’m . . . I’m . . . But!”
The captain leaned back with a sigh. “‘But,’ Lieutenant?”
“We already have a battalion quartermaster!”
“We developed a sudden and urgent need for him in one of the orbital stations. You’ll just have to manage somehow, Lieutenant. Dis—missed!”
Alice had been in combat, but she’d only seen one mission—and she’d been terrified every minute, as much by the appearance of the Hothri as by the danger. Then her right arm had been burned off at the elbow. She remembered screaming and blacking out—she remembered, but she tried not to. She remembered waking up, too, seeing what was left of her arm, and screaming again. That time it was the sedative jet that had put her to sleep—and after that, she remembered the counseling, the exercises to get her used to her prosthetic arm, and her amazement at how much it looked and felt like her real one. That was why she hadn’t opted for a graft, of course—she would have felt very strange with arms that didn’t match. The prosthetic felt like the real thing; the only time she knew it wasn’t was when she had to pick up something heavy. The mechanical arm was much stronger than the real one. That had taken some getting used to, and a good many broken drinking glasses.
Now, a year later, she could do everything with it that she’d been able to do before. But it was her right arm, and the Navy didn’t feel like taking chances on a malfunction, so she’d been rotated back to the Reserves, and given a civilian job. All in all, she guessed she was happy about it, but there was always that sneaking guilt.
Well, if she couldn’t be firing a rifle in Arista’s defense, she could at least be making them. She tried to relax into the boredom and let it pass while she let her gaze rove over the tell-tales, watching for red lights. There was scarcely ever any trouble—the robot factory was so completely efficient! Metal roared as the truck dumped into the giant hopper, but the tell-tales said it was all feeding down to the assembly line without trouble.
Something rang like a gong, then clattered, and Alice turned back, alerted. Sure enough, a bar of pig iron had slipped between the truck’s funnel and the hopper. She jumped back, judging its trajectory and stepping aside just in time to avoid its hitting her toes. Then she scooped it up with the prosthetic arm—so much stronger than her real one!—and started to toss it back into the hopper.
But she stopped with a frown, hefting the bar. It felt lighter than it should have. Flesh and blood couldn’t have told the difference, but the circuits in the prosthetic were sensitive to very slight differences in weight and texture. And the pig iron felt wrong. She frowned, looking at it closely, and saw the multitude of tiny, almost microscopic, bubbles, as though the iron were foamed. It didn’t really matter, she supposed—the machines on the assembly line would melt it down or forge the air out of it, wouldn’t they? But it did bother her, that the Company was paying for solid pig iron, but getting foam.
Or maybe they weren’t. Maybe they were paying for foam, and getting what they paid for. She summoned resolve and tossed the pig back into the hopper—it was none of her business. That was what the company had managers for, and she wasn’t about to make a fool out of herself by reporting something they already knew.
But it nagged, and nagged—maybe they didn’t know. She just had to tell someone—but who? Nobody from the company, of course. But who? .
Lunch break came, and with it, Clothilde. Alice had to reconcile pleasure in human conversation with a friend, with her irritation—Clothilde was sure to try to set her up with another man. She always did. Clothilde had finally married, and was now evangelizing with all the fervor of a convert, trying to make sure all her friends were as happy as she.