“Never the main shall tweet,” Peace cut in. “That’s an ancient joke, Vernie, and it was rotten even when it was first invented. Do you mind if we get some sleep?”
“Only trying to cheer us up, Warren. Don’t you like gags?”
“If I had a gag right now I’d roll it up tight and…” Peace fell into an exhausted sleep before he could finish the sentence, and for the remainder of that night he dreamed the short, simplified dreams appropriate to a man whose personal memory went back only three days.
Being deaf to the special harmonics in officers’ voices gave Peace a considerable degree of freedom. He had to make a show of promptly obeying every direct order, but as soon as he was out of sight of the officer concerned he could—in the confusion of the battle zone—safely return to his own pursuits. The command enforcer system positively aided him in this because the idealistic young lieutenants who made up the command cadre never thought of querying his activities as long as he went about them with a sufficiently grim and purposeful look.
On his first day of comparative liberty he went to the flattened area used for spaceship landings and was disappointed to find that his new ideas about the vessels were wrong in one important respect.
Having rid himself of the concept of spaceships looking like graceful gleaming spires, he had formed the notion that at each end of the rectangular structures there were hand-operated roller signs announcing their destinations. When he saw, instead, the featureless metal walls of the transceiver towers he had to accept that his visualised signs belonged to some other mode of transportation, and this led to a new thought.
He had proved that he still retained an excellent knowledge of electronics, and yet the machine used on him at Fort Eccles—designed to wipe out all memories associated with his guilt and remorse—had chosen to obliterate everything he must have known about spaceship technology and operation. Did this mean that his life had been intimately concerned with spacecraft? Had he been a pilot? Or a spaceship designer?
Peace toyed with the idea that he might be able to identify his previous areas of expertise by listing all the subjects of which he currently knew nothing; then came the realization that it was difficult to discriminate between natural and induced ignorance. Did the fact that he knew nothing whatsoever about the breeding habits of Anobium punctatum prove that he had been a woodworm eradicator?
Deciding that action was better than introspection, he returned his attention to the present. He had set his heart on reaching the planet Aspatria, and to that end began spending as much time as possible around the landing area, hoping to stow himself away on a ship going in the right direction. His first plan was to question crew members about their destinations, but dozens of ship arrivals and take-offs went by without his seeing a single astronaut and he developed a strong suspicion that the vessels were fully automatic in their operation. He then took to questioning departing rankers about their destinations. This actively, apart from bringing him close to being apprehended by an unusually alert officer, produced only the information that—incredible though it might seem—there were other war zones which made Threlkeld look like a picnic ground.
Three days after he had built his command neutralizer, Peace and his unit were shipped out to Torver, a rainy world where the morose Copgrove Farr died horribly as a result of kicking a toadstool which exploded with such violence that millions of its spores passed through his clothing and skin. By the time his fellow legionaries buried him, ten minutes later, he was sprouting fungi from head to foot. Peace awarded Farr a posthumous forgiveness for various remarks made about the thinness of his legs. He also redoubled his efforts to find a ship heading for Aspatria.
A week later Lieutenant Merriman and his unit were moved on to the planet Hardknott, where the unlucky Private Benger swarmed up a tree to escape from a pack of armourdillos and was promptly devoured by the tree itself. By this time Peace was becoming desperate, even though he inherited Benger’s shoes, which proved a remarkably good fit once he had shaken out of them all that remained of their donor. When he turned in at night he would speculate, in the few seconds before sleep claimed him, on why the crooked lawyers who drew up the Legion’s service contract had taken such pains to secure his labour for thirty, forty or fifty years. The way things were going with the 203rd, it was a statistical certainty that—even with his invention enabling him to disobey the more suicidal orders—he would be poisoned, crushed, torn apart or eaten within a matter of weeks. There was even a possibility of his meeting all of those fates at more or less the same time.
Like the other men in his unit, Peace found himself crying quite a lot, and becoming thinner and more jumpy with every passing day. By the end of the first month Vernie Ryan’s plumpness had disappeared and the shreds of his green glitter suit hanging around him created the impression he was covered with some form of seaweed. Private Dinkle, who had had more combat time than either of them, developed a nervous tic and a habit of crossing himself and muttering gloomily about Armageddon.
“The way he talks about Armageddon,” Ryan whispered to Peace over his breakfast gruel one morning, “you’d think it was the end of the world.”
“I warned you about those blasted jokes,” Peace replied, grabbing a convenient strip of Ryan’s suit and twisting it round his neck. He began to apply pressure, then realized the enormity of what he was doing and relaxed his grip. “I’m sorry, Vernie. I think I’m cracking up.”
“It’s all right,” Ryan said, massaging his throat. “I used to be a professional comic, you know, and my gags used to have the same effect on people even when times were good.”
“I can’t remember any good times—that’s the trouble. As far as I’m concerned, it’s always been like this.” Peace felt in his pocket for his blue toad, the small companion which had once offered him a crumb of hope. “But that’s no excuse for getting rough with you.”
“Let’s forget it.”
Peace nodded miserably. He stroked the smooth plastic of the toad with his thumb, wishing it could summon a genie with the power to grant his dearest wishes.
The entrance flap of the mess tent was lifted up and Lieutenant Merriman came through the triangular opening. Something about his appearance struck Peace as being highly unusual; then he realized that the lieutenant had left off his battle dress and was spruced up in a smart new uniform. He was accompanied by a timid-looking sergeant who had a box filled with small buff envelopes. The sergeant was also carrying an armful of flim-sey blue clothing.
“Gather round,” Merriman cried. “This is it! The day you’ve all been waiting for!”
“What day is that, sir?” Ryan said cautiously.
“Leave day, of course. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No, sir.” Ryan gave the others a glance of round-eyed surmise. “Do we get time off?”
“What a question!” Merriman’s mouth tried to stretch itself into a grin, but as this set up an impossible stress on the limited amount of lip material available it had to content itself with several rapid oscillations at the corners. “What a silly question! Did you really think your commanding officers were too lofty and too remote to appreciate how much strain you’ve been under? No, men, we know only too well that you can’t fight off battle fatigue indefinitely, that you need time in which to relax, to recuperate, to let the mental scars heal themselves.”
“That’s great, sir. How much time do we get?”
Merriman glanced at his watch. “Well, Ryan, as you’ve been in the Legion for thirty days, you’re entitled to three hours.”