At that moment, before I could answer anything, the wall speakers around us sang: “—shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young!” and a girl’s voice added, “Personnel for F.C.T. Rodger Young, stand to boat. Berth H. Nine minutes.”
Father bounced to his feet, grabbed his kit roll. “That’s mine! Take care of yourself, Son — and hit those exams. Or you’ll find you’re still not too big to paddle.”
“I will, Father.”
He embraced me hastily. “See you when we get back!” And he was gone, on the bounce.
In the Commandant’s outer office I reported to a fleet sergeant who looked remarkably like Sergeant Ho, even to lacking an arm. However, he lacked Sergeant Ho’s smile as well. I said, “Career Sergeant Juan Rico, to report to the Commandant pursuant to orders.”
He glanced at the clock. “Your boat was down seventy-three minutes ago. Well?”
So I told him. He pulled his lip and looked at me meditatively. “I’ve heard every excuse in the book. But you’ve just added a new page. Your father, your own father, really was reporting to your old ship just as you were detached?”
“The bare truth, Sergeant. You can check it — Corporal Emilio Rico.”
“We don’t check the statements of the ‘young gentlemen’ around here. We simply cashier them if it ever turns out that they have not told the truth. Okay, a boy who wouldn’t be late in order to see his old man off wouldn’t be worth much in any case. Forget it.”
“Thanks, Sergeant. Do I report to the Commandant now?”
“You’ve reported to him.” He made a check mark on a list. “Maybe a month from now he’ll send for you along with a couple of dozen others. Here’s your room assignment, here’s a checkoff list you start with — and you can start by cutting off those chevrons. But save them; you may need them later. But as of this moment you are ‘Mister,’ not ‘Sergeant.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir.’ I call you ‘sir.’ But you won’t like it.”
I am not going to describe Officer Candidates School. It’s like Basic, but squared and cubed with books added. In the mornings we behaved like privates, doing the same old things we had done in Basic and in combat and being chewed out for the way we did them — by sergeants. In the afternoons we were cadets and “gentlemen,” and recited on and were lectured concerning an endless list of subjects: math, science, galactography, xenology, hypnopedia, logistics, strategy and tactics, communications, military law, terrain reading, special weapons, psychology of leadership, anything from the care and feeding of privates to why Xerxes lost the big one. Most especially how to be a one-man catastrophe yourself while keeping track of fifty other men, nursing them, loving them, leading them, saving them — but never babying them.
We had beds, which we used all too little; we had rooms and showers and inside plumbing; and each four candidates had a civilian servant, to make our beds and clean our rooms and shine our shoes and lay out our uniforms and run errands. This service was not intended as a luxury and was not; its purpose was to give the student more time to accomplish the plainly impossible by relieving him of things any graduate of Basic can already do perfectly.
Six days shalt thou work and do all thou art able,
The seventh the same and pound on the cable.
Or the Army version ends:—and clean out the stable, which shows you how many centuries this sort of thing has been going on. I wish I could catch just one of those civilians who think we loaf and put them through one month of O.C.S.
In the evenings and all day Sundays we studied until our eyes burned and our ears ached — then slept (if we slept) with a hypnopedic speaker droning away under the pillow.
Our marching songs were appropriately downbeat: “No Army for mine, no Army for mine! I’d rather be behind the plow any old time!” and “Don’t wanta study war no more,” and “Don’t make my boy a soldier, the weeping mother cried,” and — favorite of all — the old classic “Gentlemen Rankers” with its chorus about the Little Lost Sheep: “—God ha’ pity on such as we. Baa! Yah! Bah!”
Yet somehow I don’t remember being unhappy. Too busy, I guess. There was never that psychological “hump” to get over, the one everybody hits in Basic; there was simply the ever-present fear of flunking out. My poor preparation in math bothered me especially. My roommate, a colonial from Hesperus with the oddly appropriate name of “Angel,” sat up night after night, tutoring me.
Most of the instructors, especially the officers, were disabled. The only ones I can remember who had a full complement of arms, legs, eyesight, hearing, etc., were some of the non-commissioned combat instructors — and not all of those. Our coach in dirty fighting sat in a powered chair, wearing a plastic collar, and was completely paralyzed from the neck down. But his tongue wasn’t paralyzed, his eye was photographic, and the savage way in which he could analyze and criticize what he had seen made up for his minor impediment.
At first I wondered why those obvious candidates for physical retirement and full-pay pension didn’t take it and go home. Then I quit wondering.
I guess the high point in my whole cadet course was a visit from Ensign Ibañez, she of the dark eyes, junior watch officer and pilot-under-instruction of the Corvette Transport Mannerheim. Carmencita showed up, looking incredibly pert in Navy dress whites and about the size of a paperweight, while my class was lined up for evening meal muster — walked down the line and you could hear eyeballs click as she passed — walked straight up to the duty officer and asked for me by name in a clear, penetrating voice.
The duty officer, Captain Chandar, was widely believed never to have smiled at his own mother, but he smiled down at little Carmen, straining his face out of shape, and admitted my existence … whereupon she waved her long black lashes at him, explained that her ship was about to boost and could she please take me out to dinner?
And I found myself in possession of a highly irregular and totally unprecedented three-hour pass. It may be that the Navy has developed hypnosis techniques that they have not yet gotten around to passing on to the Army. Or her secret weapon may be older than that and not usable by M.I. In any case I not only had a wonderful time but my prestige with my classmates, none too high until then, climbed to amazing heights.
It was a glorious evening and well worth flunking two classes the next day. It was somewhat dimmed by the fact that we had each heard about Carl — killed when the Bugs smashed our research station on Pluto — but only somewhat, as we had each learned to live with such things.
One thing did startle me. Carmen relaxed and took off her hat while we were eating, and her blue-black hair was all gone. I knew that a lot of the Navy girls shaved their heads — after all, it’s not practical to take care of long hair in a war ship and, most especially, a pilot can’t risk having her hair floating around, getting in the way, in any free-fall maneuvers. Shucks, I shaved my own scalp, just for convenience and cleanliness. But my mental picture of little Carmen included this mane of thick, wavy hair.
But, do you know, once you get used to it, it’s rather cute. I mean, if a girl looks all right to start with, she still looks all right with her head smooth. And it does serve to set a Navy girl apart from civilian chicks — sort of a lodge pin, like the gold skulls for combat drops. It made Carmen look distinguished, gave her dignity, and for the first time I fully realized that she really was an officer and a fighting man — as well as a very pretty girl.