The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  Mistress Cooper returned front and faced the women again. "Cadette Corporal Joan Darris--one step forward."

  Startled and a little confused, Joan hesitantly stepped up. Mistress Cooper handed Joan a small library and a complete sorority roster. "You are Temporary Sorority Drill Instructor," she told Joan. "It is your responsibility to see that everyone on this roster arrives at Camp Buffum as ordered, and that every cadette knows the ranks, insignia, basic organization, decorations, and gynuflection of the Peace Corps by the time your bus arrives at Camp Buffum. You don't have anyone to say goodbye to, do you?"

  "No, Ma'am," Joan said. She had said her goodbyes back at Helix Vista, taken the family limousine to Poughkeepsie, and sent it back.

  "Very well," Cooper said. "Order the sorority to fall out."

  Joan turned around to face the other inductees. "Sorority," she shouted, "fall out!"

  The other women began scattering. Mistress Cooper told Joan, "You're in complete charge until the bus arrives at Camp Buffum, where your permanent Drill Instructor, First Corporal Georgia McDonough, will meet you--what's so funny, Cadette?"

  "Nothing, Ma'am, except I seem to know a lot of the Irish."

  "Very well. I suggest you delegate the memorization drilling to your harem leaders--it will spread the resentment out a little bit. Understand me?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Good. Your bus has an autopilot and knows the way; simply tell it to go as soon as everyone's aboard. Call the roster again onboard. I won't hold it against you if stragglers hold you up, but I will if anyone is left behind. If someone from a harem is missing, send that harem leader out to get her and wait. If there are any further problems, come and get me in my office down the hall or phone from the bus."

  "Ma'am," Joan asked softly, "why me?"

  Mistress Cooper smiled slightly. "Because Dr. Chertok tells me you're a potential troublemaker--which translates onto my roster as leadership potential. Keep it all under control and you'll find things going easier for you--all right?"

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  "Good. Make sure you know the drills better than anyone else on the bus by the time you arrive at Camp Buffum."

  "What about lunch, Ma'am?"

  "Good Goddess, I'd forgotten. There's a galley at the rear of the bus. Have your harem leaders each pick out a cadette from her harem to serve, and stagger the meals between about noon and one o'clock--that's twelve to thirteen hundred in dicterial parlance. There are also snacks you can hand out around fifteen hundred, and airsickness pills for anyone who wants one. Still with me?"

  "Yes, Mistress."

  "When you arrive at Long Beach, line up the sorority in formation in front of the bus, and order them to gynuflect Corporal McConough when she arrives."

  "How will I know her, Ma'am?"

  "She will be the only First Corporal--the insignia on her collars will be silver yonis--who approaches your sorority, and you will not be rebuked for that assumption if someone else approaches in her place. Uh, you do know how to gynuflect, don't you?"

  "Like this, Ma'am?" Joan put her left foot forward and bent her right knee, causing her hips to swivel as she lowered.

  "Not so deep," Cooper said, "or you'll wear yourself out. Give me another one--wait for me to return it, since I'm standing--when I dismiss you."

  "Do we gynuflect any superior officer we see, Ma'am?"

  "No. Gynes are given just in dress formation, when reporting to or leaving the presence of a superior officer, and when acknowledging an order. Ready, Cadette Darris? Dismissed."

  Joan gynuflected Mistress Cooper, received a gyne in return, and left.

  The eight-hour bus flight to the other coast was completely uneventful, if one didn't consider it an event, an hour into the flight, when Cadette Sommers threw up onto Cadette Fairman. Certainly Cadette Fairman wasn't inclined to consider it an event. More out of a sense of responsibility than out of a sense of compassion, Joan cleaned up both cadettes and the seat herself, and found that her treatment by all the other cadettes was considerably warmer afterward. Joan was happy that she'd taken an airsick pill herself, though, inasmuch as she'd been inclined to queasiness since her visit to the vivarium.

  By the time the bus descended onto the landing strip in Camp Buffum at 1415 hours, GMT-plus-Eight, it was a close decision as to which harem would be up front.

  First Corporal Georgia Gaffer McDonough, a broad-shouldered and stocky woman with a roundish race to which she had to devote eternal vigilance so that it wouldn't look pixyish, waited until the women were in formation in the parking area before she approached the bus. When she was almost in front, Joan shouted, "Sorority...ten-hutt!" Dress right...dress! Taurus Twenty-five, gynu-flect!"

  Corporal McDonough looked surprised, but returned the gyne.

  Joan turned to McDonough, gynuflected again, and said, "Ma'am, Taurus Twenty-five Sorority reporting to Corporal McDonough as ordered, Ma'am."

  McDonough gyned again in return. "Your name, Cadette?"

  "Cadette Corporal Joan Darris, Temporary Drill Instructor, Ma,am."

  "At ease, Cadette. We don't expect pink-and-polish on the first day."

  "Yes, Ma'am." Joan went into "at ease" stance.

  "Though it seems a shame to waste it. Cadette Darris, in ascending order, tell me the Peace Corps's ranks with their insignia."

  "Ma'am," Joan said, "the ranks of the Peace Corps with their insignia are: Cadette Corporal, Virgo; Second Corporal, gold yoni; First Corporal, silver yoni; Full Matron, 'N.D.' circle of peace; Matriarchs, Venus crosses, Ma'am."

  McDonough approached a woman in the first rank--Alpha Harem." "What is the insigne of the First Lady, Cadette?"

  "Ma'am, as a civilian, the First Lady doesn't have one, Ma'am."

  The dark-haired D.I. went to the next cadette. "What are the organizational levels in descending order, of the Corps--and what rank commands each level?"

  "Ma'am," the cadette said, "the organizational levels of the Peace Corps with their commanding ranks are: The Corps, commanded in descending order by the First Lady, the Ministry of Peace, and the Supreme Matriarch; the Conglomerates, commanded by a Two- Cross Matriarch; the Divisions, commanded by a One-Cross Matriarch; the Cleavages, commanded by a Full Matron; the Dicteria, commanded by a Lieutenant Matron; the Troops, commanded by a Mistress; the Sororities, commanded by a First Corporal; and the Harems, commanded by a Second Corporal, Ma'am."

  McDonough went to a cadette in the second rank. "Cadette, what are the Peace Corps decorations in ascending order?"

  "Ma'am, the Peace Corps decorations in ascending order are: the Copper Pentacle, the Gold Pentacle, the Cross of Earth, and the Federation Medal of Honor. Ma'am," she added a split second late.

  "Describe the Metal of Honor."

  "Ma'am, the Metal of Honor consists of a Venus Cross with a Pentagram in its circle, Ma'am."

  "Do you expect to win the Medal of Honor in the next three years?"

  "Ma'am, I hope not, since it's only awarded posthumously, Ma'am."

  No one laughed.

  Corporal McDonough returned to face Joan. "Order the sorority to stand at ease."

  "Sorority," Joan commanded, "at ease."

  The women relaxed their posture, moved legs apart, and clasped their hands behind their backs.

  "Well done," McDonough said. "I have never before seen a sorority arrive so well prepared. Keep this up for the next six weeks and you'll find there are special privileges to be won. In the meantime, I am making permanent the temporary appointments of Harem Leaders, and the Temporary Drill Instructor will now be my Assistant Drill Instructor." She turned to Joan. "Do you object, Cadette?"

  Joan thought back to the advice Mistress Cooper had given her. "Uh, no, Ma'am."

  "Good. The Harem Leaders and Assistant Drill Instructor will be breveted to Second Corporal for the duration of training - unless you or they do something to cause me to bust them back - and as such will wear both the Virgo and the gold yoni. I trust I will not have to re
move the latter insigne. If I do, you all will be sorry."

  "The schedule for the rest of today and tomorrow is as follows: stow your belongings in your assigned dorm rooms by eighteen-fifteen, supper in the mess hall from eighteen-fifteen to nineteen hundred, orientation lecture in the dorm assembly hall at nineteen-fifteen, and time to get your dorm rooms in regulation order from twenty-one hundred to lights out at twenty- two thirty. Reveille tomorrow morning is oh six-thirty, breakfast from oh seven hundred to oh seven forty-five, and medical examinations from oh eight hundred to whenever the doctors say you're through. When you are through, depending on the time, you will report directly either to the quartermistress for uniforms, or to the mess hall and then to the quartermistress. Tomorrow evening will be spent in a second orientation lecture followed by a personal and dorm-room inspection.

  "You will be living in Steinem Hall for the next six weeks. There will be three cadettes to a dorm room, except for the Assistant Drill Instructor, who will share a room with me. When you are given the order to fall out, report to your dorm, decide who will bunk with whom, and leave me out of it. If there are any disputes, consult your harem leaders and assistant D.I., in that order." Corporal McDonough turned to Joan. "The tram will be here momentarily," she said softly. "The departure code is 'Steinem,' and the dormitory computer will tell you what rooms your sorority will have. I'll expect you to get them all to the mess hall by eighteen-fifteen for roll call. Got that?"

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  "Take charge of your sorority, Corporal."

  "Yes, Ma'am." Joan gyned, received a gyne, and turned to the formation. "Sorority, by harems, fall out and retrieve your belongings!"

  "Alpha Harem," their leader shouted, "fall out!"

  Beta through Epsilon harems fell out in sequence. "Amazing," McDonough said to Joan. "How did you do all this in eight hours?"

  "Ma,am," Joan said. "I had the harems compete against each other in learning the drills, with snacks as prizes, then assigned their ranks and letters by score, with the top harem up front."

  Corporal McDonough laughed.

  The medical examination, Tuesday morning after breakfast, was virtually a repeat of the one Joan had been given in Poughkeepsie two weeks earlier, with the exception that this time everything was done by a live doctor, Lieutenant Matron Torres. Joan found it considerably less comfortable than with the robot. This time, though, Lieutenant Matron Torres told Joan, "You might as well get uniformed and have lunch with your sorority. I'm scheduling you for an abortion at fourteen hundred. In the meantime"--she took a bottle of dark liquid from a shelf--"drink this."

  "What is it, Ma'am?"

  "It's just a dye. Go on, drink it. It's not bad-tasting, and it won't do much of anything to you."

  Joan hesitated a moment, then unsealed it and drank it down. It had a wintergreen flavor.

  "Get dressed," the doctor said, "and report back here at fourteen hundred."

  After dressing once more in her civvies, Joan took a tram across the camp to the quartermistress, was ordered to strip naked, fed her civilian clothes to a machine which cleaned, folded and boxed them for her, then stepped into a tailor's closet, the same sort one might find at any Manhattan Boulevard couturier's. A low-powered laser measured her from tip to toe and fed her measurements into the tailoring mechanism, which in five minutes provided her with a white dress uniform, five pink jumpsuits, five pairs of pink tights, two pink nighties, and matching shoes and accessories for each outfit. She didn't have to bother trying them all on to know that they would fit her perfectly. She just put on one of the jumpsuits, which was regulation for all-around wear while on duty.

  The quartermistress presonally handed her the Virgo and gold yoni insignia, which she pinned onto her collar.

  Properly attired, Joan dropped the other clothing down a delivery chute with orders to send it to her room, and caught a tram outside back to the mess hall. She didn't, however, have much of an appetite for lunch.

  At 1400, Joan reported back to the medical building, and found that Cadette Sommers--the one who had thrown up in the bus--was scheduled for an abortion just ahead of her.

  Sommers was crying. "They have no right!" she kept telling Joan over and over again. "It's my body and they have no right to make me have an abortion!"

  Joan really didn't know what to say to her. She had already had the same thought many times, ever since she had received her draft notice. All Joan could think of was the phrase "submit to the inevitable," but she also thought that the old maxim was wrong, and should have been "Inevitibility is the last refuge of the scoundrel." She ended up not telling Sommers, and herself, anything more than "This too shall pass."

  Sommers went in first. She was inside only five minutes before she came out. She was still crying.

  "Did they postpone you?" Joan asked.

  "No," Sommers said. "It's over already."

  "Corporal Joan Darris," Lieutenant Matron Torres said.

  Joan got up and went into the operating room.

  "Get undressed," the doctor said, "then lie down on the table."

  Joan stripped naked, for the third time that day, and climbed up onto the operating table. "Don't I get an anesthetic?" she asked the doctor.

  "You won't need one," she answered. "You won't feel anything, really, anyway. Now, just lie down on the table and hold still."

  When Joan lay down on the operating table, able to look straight up, she could see that rising into the ceiling above her was an apparatus she recognized as a surgical laser. Of course, she thought dimly; it couldn't have been anything else. If the rainbow was supposed to be God's promise never to destroy the human race again, then the laser had to be His sword, made from the same coherent light that spirits must be.

  The laser projected a spot of light onto Joan's lower abdomen, but she knew that this was only a rangefinder, searching for the embryo; if it had had any power behind it, it wouldn't have been moving around so much.

  The doctor's voice, coming from behind a shield, said, "On the count of three, I want you to take a deep breath and hold it until I tell you to let go. One."

  The Sword of God, Joan thought.

  "Two."

  It had given her everything of importance in her life, but it also took everything of importance away.

  "Three."

  Joan took a deep breath and held it; a few seconds passed while the optical laser found its definitive target; then there was an instant-long pulse, and Joan felt something within her die.

  The doctor came out from beind the shield. "That's it," Torres said. "You can get dressed now."

  Joan got off the table and began to put on her uniform again. She hadn't felt the laser, which was tuned to a wavelength that treated her as if she were transparent and had acted only on the dye-soaked embryo, which would be expelled with her next period. The laser had left no mark on her skin.

  Joan didn't say anything. But she was thinking of words she had heard in a synogogue in Ad Astra, and thought that for her they should have been: The Laser giveth and the Laser taketh away.

  Blessed be the Name of the Laser.

  Chapter 22

  CORPORAL GEORGIA GAFFER McDONOUGH'S second-night orientation lecture always began the same way. "You cadettes are here to learn to do a job. It's a necessary job to prevent men from blowing their tops and leading us into another war--one that might incinerate the surface of this planet next time. Some people may still think it's a dirty job. Well, maybe it is. It still has to be done. You may not like it at first, but it's necessary, and you're going to learn it or I'll know the reason why. If you do as you're told, after a while you may even find yourselves beginning to like it."

  Thus began in earnest the basic training of Taurus 25 Sorority. Minus three women who had been pulled out of the sorority by doctors who decided they needed more recovery time from plastic surgery, they spent their first week at Camp Buffum in orientation lectures with various specialty personnel, having their physical prowess and stamina
tested, performing calisthenics before breakfast and aerobic dancing before taps, and being told a lot that "I don't care how you learned to do it back in Poughkeepsie, Cadette--from now on you do it the Corps' way!"

  The first week's training was an odd mixture of disciplines from various different sources. There were hygiene classes, sensuality training, anatomy lectures that taught where pleasure centers were to be found and where pain centers were to be avoided. There was a lecture on the sexual theories of Wilhelm Reich--and his treatment of "body armoring" as a cause of violence--as well as demonstrations of orgonomic massage, theoretical explanations of oral erotic technique, posture drills, formation and marching drills, makeup, hairstyling, sexual ethics, and History of the Corps.

  One lecture in particular piqued Joan's interest. "Orgasms," Corporal McDonough began. "They are both the Corps's greatest prize for you women and our greatest curse. Properly handled, your orgasm can be your best friend, giving you the fuel to make it through your three-year term. Improperly handled, it can be your worst enemy. If you aren't achieving enough orgasms, you can become too bored to perform efficiently. If you are achieving too many orgasms, you can exhaust yourself so you don't have the strength to complete your duties."

  Somehow, Joan thought that she would not be worrying too much about the latter problem.

  Joan, having decided to enter the Corps at all, decided to learn these lessons better than anyone else. For once in her life, she was the complete conformist. Once in a while, she couldn't help wondering if the Touchable she'd seen icked could possibly have been one of Corporal McDonough's washouts.

  It was not impossible. McDonough was inclined to dorm-room chats with her brevet assistant for hours past lights-out--no major problem, since neither of them needed more than six hours' sleep a night--and Joan learned that the sixty-year-old D.I. had been at her job for half her life, turning down promotions so she could stay "with the girls." "Six times a year," McDonough told Joan, offering her a joynette and lighting one herself, "five thousand scared young women are dumped into this base. For most of them, the way they will feel toward sex, marriage, men, children, and life in general will depend on the lessons they learn here. In many of the sororities, you'll hear the D.I. call cadettes pussies if they show any emotion, and drill into them that the commen who come into the dicteria are nothing but stupid penises--Mister Dumbjohns." She took a toke and lit the other joynette for Joan. "I don't permit that. My women will have to live with and love both themselves and their commen when they leave the Corps, and if I can send them off to the dicteria with the right attitudes, I'll feel I'll have given them a good start toward that goal."