Berref would undoubtedly have the overman termed. It would be better at least to let Elmo keep his dignity. These things had a habit of taking care of themselves. When a man ran out of road, he didn't last much longer in combat.
Eight
The news was both good and bad. There was a jump coming-but after the jump there would be a stop at a recstar.
"Liberty."
"Women!"
"Give it to me!"
"I'd give up getting laid if I could miss the jump." "You gotta enjoy what you can get." "And you gotta suffer to get it." "That's the way of it." "You said it."
Just as they thought that they were being accepted, Hark and his intake were once again taking a nervous backseat. The recstar, after combat, was the next great mystery. Hark himself, who had started to feel that he was growing into the role of the fighting man, was pushed back into the shadows of the awkward and nervous semivirgin listening to the others giggling in the darkness on the hillside. What would these women be like? What had the therem done to them? Had they been as ruthlessly programmed as the men? The longtimers were no help.
"Hell, boy, they're just like us." A day later someone else had told him. "They're different, real different. Ain't that the point of it all?"
There was the usual, less than satisfactory, consensus.
"You'll find out."
As the jumptime approached an entirely new atmosphere took over the messdeck. There was little of the usual griping and complaining, and almost a lightness in the air. Even Dacker was unusually amiable, and Renchett managed to keep his knife sheathed. The general feeling seemed to be that now that they were going somewhere they wanted to go, they were almost prepared to take the jump in stride. It was something that Hark had never seen before, and it made him slightly uneasy. It was hard to accept that these battle-hardened killers were capable of a juvenile excitement. There were outbreaks of joking and horseplay. Dyrkin actually smiled. The prospect of a respite from the war, no matter how temporary, brought out something else in the men. There was an all around increase in personal hygiene, chins were shaved close to the bone, and troopers even borrowed small mirrors from one another and studied their appearances. The ones who had exposed prosthetics actually polished them to a high, burnished shine. These endeavors caused a good deal of raucous comment.
"Women ain't going to be lovin' up to you on account of your spare parts, peckerhead."
"Getting something replaced is the sure sign of a real man. Women know that."
"Depends on what you got replaced."
"That's mine all mine, asshole."
"I don't know about that, but you still look like a chiba's cousin to me."
One contributory factor to the general levity was the fact that the noncoms were pretty much staying away from the men on the messdecks. It was as though part of the preparation for liberty was a certain relaxing of the controls. Hark had learned enough to suspect that there was a deliberate psychology behind this. Nothing in the Therem Alliance seemed to happen by accident.
It was only in the final hundred minutes before the jump that the more normal gloom reasserted itself. The pain was too close to pretend any longer that it was going to be a breeze. When the alarms sounded, the men went slowly to their coffins, reluctant to face unpleasant reality. Rance hurried them along; it appeared that Elmo was being kept away from the group. As Hark was climbing into his coffin, he found that the topman was standing over him.
"Don't worry, boy, you'll get through it."
"Can I ask a question?"
"If you make it fast."
"How long do we get on the recstar?"
Rance shrugged. "Seven standards, maybe ten if we're lucky. Don't think that our masters are doing this out of the kindess of their hearts. They don't have any. The cluster has to make repairs after that run-in with the Yal battlewagon, and it's easier to off-load the likes of us."
The lid of the coffin lowered, and the waiting began. Hark had expected that this jump would be the same as the last one. Even inside his fear, he was surprised when, right from the start, it proved to be totally different. The only similarity to the last one was the level of pain. It was of no comfort to realize that each jump was unique and that there would be no getting used to them. This one came on slowly, a gradual build that started as a knot in his chest and spread out through the rest of his body. There were vivid hallucinations-monsters and demons from his savage childhood ripped at his flesh and towered over the universe. They tore out his eyes and dragged his tortured body through pits of liquid fire. Encased in his screaming, he had one thing to hold on to, the one thing that he'd learned from his first jump.
There's going to be an end to this! It's going to end!
And it did. At the very peak of the pain it was gone. For an instant, he floated in a state of perfect peace, and then he was back in his coffin, soaked in sweat and aching in every part of his body.
"Did we make it okay?"
Immediately the men were out of their coffins, there was a definite effort to reestablish the previous festive mood. Everyone in the messdeck had come through the jump unscathed, and there were no deaths or insanity to cast a pall over the coming liberty. There was very little of the usual groaning and complaining. The troopers had too much to look forward to for them to dwell on the hangover from the jump
After about twenty minutes, Elmo appeared on the messdeck for the first time in days. There were a few contemptuous looks, but nobody said anything. The overman was followed by a small floating pallet loaded with fourteen folded tan uniforms.
"You lucky boys are being issued with new liberty dress."
"New tans?"
"That's right. Somebody up there must like you." "No kidding."
"So try not to throw up on them the first day."
It was probably a remark that Elmo shouldn't have made. Dacker pounced on it.
"Oh, we can hold our liquor, Overman Elmo."
Elmo ignored Dacker and started handing out the two-piece uniforms. When he was through, there was one uniform left. Dyrkin noticed it and raised an eyebrow.
"What's the spare set of tans for?"
Kemlo, who'd lost a foot to the wire, walked stiffly through the entrance to the messdeck. "That's for me. Think I'd miss the fun?"
He was dressed in a singlet and shorts. His brand-new artificial foot was gleaming stainless steel and made clicking noises as he walked. It was plain that he was still not completely used to it.
Dyrkin grinned. "I thought they'd termed you, buddy."
"I'm too ugly to kill." He flexed the skeletal toes of his steel foot. "Think the girls are going to like it?"
"Gonna knock 'em dead."
Elmo had produced a small plastic folder.
"You three new fish, you're entitled to your combat flashes. Here, impress the girls with them."
He handed red and yellow lightning patches to Hark, Morish, and Voda. Hark scowled. He didn't think that Elmo ought to be calling them new fish now that they'd been in combat. Elmo noticed his expression and looked at him questioningly.
"What's the matter with you, boy?"
Hark made his face a mask. "Nothing, Overman Elmo."
Elmo glanced around at the others with a knowing and unpleasant grin. "Maybe he's worried he won't be able to get it up when the time comes."
The joke was received by blank, stony faces. As far as the troopers were concerned, plrno had lost the right to insult anyone's manhood on this messdeck. There was a moment of tense silence, and then the overman turned on his heel and marched smartly away.