These cadets were not only presumed to be gentlemen; there was a national law which stated that they were gentlemen. So they were taught a bare minimum about how to handle a sword, just enough to keep them from slicing their fingers or stabbing bystanders-not enough to fight with them, just to keep them from looking too silly when protocol required them to wear swords.
But swordsmanship was a recognized sport, called "fencing." It had none of the prestige of football, or boxing, or even water polo-but it was on the list; a plebe could sign up for it.
David spotted this as a way out. Under a simple physical law, if he was up in the fencing loft,then he was not down on the football field, with sadistic gorillas in hobnailed boots jumping up and down on him. Long before the upper clansmen returned to school Plebe Cadet Lamb had established himself as a member of the fencing squad, with a record of never missing a day, and was trying hard to look like a "good prospect" for the team.
At that time and place three forms of fencing were taught: saber, dueling sword, and foiclass="underline" The first two used full-sized weapons. True, edges were dulled and points were bated; nevertheless a man could get hurt with them-even fatally, though that was very rare. But the foil was a lightweight toy, a 'fake sword with a limber blade that bent at the slightest pressure. The stylized imitation swordplay that used the foil was about as dangerous as tiddlywinks. This was the "weapon" David selected.
It was made for him. The highly artificial rules of foil fencing gave great advantage to fast reflexes and a sharp brain, both of which he had. Some exertion was necessary-but not much compared with football, lacrosse, or even tennis. Best 'of all, it required no body-against-body pounding that David found so distasteful in the rough games he was avoiding. David applied himself single-mindedly to acquiring skill so that his haven would be secure.
So diligent was he in protecting his sanctuary that, before his plebe year was over, he was National Novice Foil Champion. This caused his squad leader to smile at him, an expression that hurt his face. His cadet company commander noticed him for the first time and congratulated him.
Success with the foil even got him out of some "punishment" 'beatings. One Friday evening, when he was about to be beaten for some imaginary dereliction, David said, "Sir, if it's the same to you, I'd rather have twice as many swats on Sunday-because tomorrow we're fencing the Princeton plebe team and, if you do the job I know you can do, it might slow me up tomorrow."
The first clansman was impressed by this because having the Navy win, at any time and for any purpose and in anything, took precedence by Sacred Law over anything else, even the righteous pleasure of beating a "smart ass" plebe. He answered, ""Tell you what, mister. Report to my room after supper on Sunday. If you lose tomorrow, you get a double dose of the medicine you've got coming to you. But if you win, we'll cancel it."
David won all three of his matches.
Fencing got him through his perilous plebe year with his precious skin unmarked save for scars on his bottom. He was safe now, with three easy years ahead of him, for only a plebe was subject to physical punishment, only a plebe could be ordered to take part in organized mayhem....
(Omitted)
One body-contact sport David loved, one of ancient popularity, which he had learned back in those hills he had fled from. But it was played with girls and was not officially recognized at this school. There were harsh rules against it, and .a cadet caught practicing it was kicked out without mercy.
But David, like all true geniuses, paid only pragmatic attention to rules made by other people-he obeyed the Eleventh Commandment and never got caught. While other cadets sought the empty prestige of sneaking girls into the barracks or went over the wall at night in search of girls, David kept his activities quiet. Only those who knew him well knew how industriously he pursued this one body-contact sport. And no one knew him well.
Eh? Female cadets? Didn't I make that plain, Ira? Not only were there no girl cadets, there was not one girl in that Navy-except a few nurses. Most particularly there were no girls at that school; there were guards night and day to keep them away from the cadets.
Don't ask me why. It was Navy policy and therefore did not have a reason. In truth there was no job in that entire Navy which could not have been performed by either sex or even by eunuchs-but by long tradition that Navy was exclusively male.
Come to think about it, a few years later that tradition was questioned-a little at first, then by the end of that century, shortly before the Collapse, that Navy had females at all levels. I am not suggesting that this change was a cause of the Collapse. There were obvious causes of the Collapse, causes I won't go into now. This change either was a null factor or possibly postponed the inevitable by a minor amount.
Either way, it doesn't figure into the Tale of the Lazy Man. When David was in school, cadets were supposed to encounter females but seldom, and only under highly stylized circumstances, rigidly bound protocol, and heavily chaperoned.* (* From the noun "chaperon." This word 'has two meanings,: (1) A person charged with preventing sexual contacts' between males and females not licensed for such contacts; (2) a person superficially performing such disservice while, in fact acting as a benign lookout. It appears that the Senior uses the word here in its first meaning rather than in its antithetical second méaaning. See appendix. J.F.45th)
Instead of fighting the rules, David looked for loopholes and made use of them-he was never caught.
Every impossible rule has its loopholes; every general prohibition creates its bootleggers. The Navy as a whole created its impossible rules; the Navy as individuals violated them, especially its curious rules about sex-a publicly monastic life on duty, a slightly veiled life of unlimited voluptuousness off duty. At sea, even harmless reliefs from sexual tension were treated most harshly when detected-although such technical violations of the mores were expected and condoned less than a century earlier. But this Navy was only a little more hypocritical in its sexual behavior than was the social matrix in which it was imbedded, more excessive in its outlets only to the degree that its public rules were more sternly impossible than those of that society as a whole. The public sexual code of that time was unbelievable, Ira; the violations of it simply mirrored in reverse its fantastic requirements. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction-if you'll excuse the obvious.
I did not intend to discuss this other than to say that David found ways to get along with the school's regulations about sex without going completely off his nut, as too many of his classmates did. I'll add only this-and this is merely rumor: Through a mischance all too easy then although unheard of today, a young woman became pregnant, presumably by David. In those days-believe me!-this was a major disaster.
Why? Just stipulate that it was a disaster; it would take forever to explain' that society and no civilized human would believe it. Cadets were forbidden to marry, the young woman had to get married under the rules current then, intervention to correct this mischance was almost unobtainable and physically very dangerous for her.
What David did about it illustrates his whole approach to life. When faced with a choice of evils, accept the least hazardous and cope with it, unblinkingly. He married her.
How he managed to do this and not get caught, I do not know. I can think of a number of ways, some simple and fairly foolproof, some complex and thereby subject to breakdown; I assume that David selected the simplest.
It changed the situation from impossible to manageable. It converted the girl's father from an enemy, all too likely to go to the Commandant of the school with the story and thereby force David to resign when he had but a few months more to reach his goal, into an ally and fellow conspirator anxious to keep the marriage secret so that his son-in-law could graduate and take his wayward daughter off his hands.