"You, haul it to number thirteen,"
The man behind the desk wore thick-framed glasses, as did all of the others I noticed. Perhaps our eyes were going to be examined and this was what we would be like if we failed. My folder was seized yet one more time, another printed sheet inserted—and I found tiny red eyes taring at me through the thick lenses. "Do you like girls, Jak?"
The question was completely unexpected. Yet it prompted a sweet vision of Bibs that obscured the medical mockery around me.
"You bet I like girls," was my instant response. An entry was made.
"Do you like boys?"
"Some of my best friends are boys." I began to have a glimmering of what this simpleton was up to.
"Are they?" Slash of pencil. Then, "Tell me about your first homosexual experience."
My jaw fell with disbelief. "I can't believe that I'm hearing this. You are doing a psychiatric examination from a checklist?
"Don't give me any cagal, kid," he snarled. "Just answer the question."
"Your medical degree should be taken away for incompetence—if you ever had one. You're probably not a shrink at all, just a time-server dressed like one."
"Sergeant!" he shouted in a cracked voice, his skin flushing. There was a thunder of feet behind me. "This draftee is refusing to cooperate."
Sharp pain slashed the backs of my bare legs and I Yowed! and jumped aside. The sergeant raised the thin cane again and licked his lips.
"That will do for the moment," my examiner said. "If my questions are answered correctly."
"Yes, .sir," I said, snapping to attention. "No need to repeat the question. My first experience of that land was at the age of twelve when, with the aid of large rubber bands, I and fourteen other boys…"
I continued on in this vein while he scribbled happily and the sergeant muttered with frustration and waddled away. When the form had been completed with the last work of fiction, I was released and ordered on to join the others. It was back to the elevators again, jammed inside in nude groups of forty. The doors closed for the descent. The doors opened.
At what was obviously the wrong floor. Before our horrified eyes there was displayed a vista of desks and typewriters. With a young lady laboring away at each of them. There was a fluttering sound as all of the folders were swung forward over the vitals. The air temperature rose as everyone turned bright red. All we could do was stand there in carmined embarrassment, listening to the endless rattle of typewriter keys, waiting for heads to turn, gentle female eyes to peer our way. After about fourteen and a half years the doors slowly closed again.
There were no females present when the doors opened this time, just the now-familiar form of another brutish sergeant. I wondered what twisted gene in the population had produced so many thick-necked, narrow-browed, potbellied sadomasochists.
"Out," this one bellowed. "Out, out, groups often, first ten through that door. Next ten next door. Not eleven! Can't you~ount, cagal-head!" Followed by a yipe of pain as discipline was enforced yet again. My ten victims shuffled into a brightly lit room and were ordered into line. We faced a white wall that was hung with a repulsive puce-green flag distastefully decorated with a black ham-
G6 itaFry HfHTfIsoii mer. An officer with little golden bars on his shoulder strutted in and stood before the flag.
"This is a very important occasion," he said in a voice heavy with importance. And occasion. "You young men, the fittest in the land, have been chosen as volunteers by your local draft boards to defend this country we love against the evil powers abroad that seek to strip away our freedoms. Now the solemn moment that you all have been waiting for has arrived. You entered this room as funloving youths. You will leave it as dedicated soldiers. You will now be sworn in as loyal members of the army. Raise your right hands and repeat after me…"
"I don't want to!"
"You have that choice," the officer said grimly. "This is a free country and you are all volunteers. You may take the oath. Or if you choose not to, which is your right, you may leave by the small door behind me which leads to the federal prison where you will begin your thirty-year sentence for neglect of democratic duties."
"My hand's up," the same voice wailed.
"You will all repeat after me. I, insert your own name, of my own free will… "
"I, insert your own name, of my own free will."
"We will do it again, and we will do it correctly, and if we don't get it right next time, there is going to be trouble."
We did it again, and correctly. Repeating what he said and trying not to hear what we were saying.
"To serve loyally… to show respect to all of the senior. officers… death if I show disloyalty… death if I should desert… death if I sleep on duty…" and so on to the very end, which was "I do swear this in the name of my mother and father and the deity of my choice."
"Hands down, congratulations, you are all now soldiers and subject to military law. Your first order is that each of you will volunteer voluntarily a liter of blood since there has been a sudden call for transfusions. Dismissed." Weak with hunger and fatigue, dizzy from loss of blood, cold noodle soup still sitting leadenly in the stomach, we reached the end of the line. We hoped.
"Fall in. Move it along. You will each be issued with a disposable uniform which you will not dispose of until ordered. You will don the uniforms and proceed up these stairs to the roof of this building where transportation is waiting to take you to Camp Slimmarco where your training will begin. You will turn in your folders before you receive your uniforms. You will each receive an identity disc with your name and service number on it. These discs are grooved across the center so they may be broken in half. Do not break them in half because that is a military crime and will be punished."
"Why make them to break in half if you don't break them in half?" I muttered aloud. The youth beside me rolled his eyes and whispered.
"Because when you're dead they break them in half and send one half to death registrations and put the other half in your mouth."
Why was it that as I shuffled forward to get my uniform I had a very strong metallic taste in my mouth?
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, tne 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."