The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted ssr-7

by Harry Harrison

  We moved. Unenthusiastically and reluctantly—but we had no choice. There must be a nudity taboo in this society because the youths spread out, trying to get close to the walls, huddled over as they stripped off their clothes. I found myself alone in the center of the room enjoying the scowled attention of the stripe-bearing monster: I quickly joined the others. So reluctant were they to reveal their shrinking flesh that dawdle as I might I was still first to the counter. Where a bored soldier seized my box and quickly sealed it, slammed it down before me and pointed to thick pens hung from the ceiling on elastic cords. “Name-address-postcode-nearest-relative.” The words, empty of meaning through endless repetition, rolled out as he turn~ to seize up the next box. I scrawled the address of the police station where we had been held and when I released the pen the countertop opened and the box vanished. Very efficient. Plastic bag in left hand, folder in my right I joined the shivering group of pallid, naked young men who hung their heads as they waited their next orders. With their clothes gone all differences of identity seemed to have fled as well.

  “You will now proceed to the eighteenth floor!” was the bellowed command. We proceeded. Into the elevator, forty at a time, doors closed, doors opened—into a vision of a sort of medical hell.

  A babble of sound, shouts for attention, screamed orders, Doctors and medical orderlies garbed in white, many with cloth masks over their faces, poked and prodded in a mad mirror-image of medical practice. Senses blurred as event ran into event.

  A physician—that is I assume he was a physician since he wore a stethoscope around his neck—seized my folder, threw it to an orderly, then clutched me by the throat. Before I could seize him by the throat in return he shouted at the orderly.

  “Thyroid, normal.” The orderly made an entry as he squeezed my stomach wall. “Hernias, negative. Cough.”

  This last was an order to me and I coughed as his rubber-clad fingers probed deep.

  There was more, but only the highlights stand out. The urinalysis section where we stood in shivering ranks, each holding a recently-filled paper cup. Our file slowly wending forward, on tiptoe for the floor was aslosh, to the white-clad, white-masked, booted and rubber-gloved orderly who dipped a disposable dropper into each cup, dropped a drop into a section of a large, sectioned chemical tray. Discarded the dropper into an overflowing container, eyed the chemical reaction. Shouted “Negative, next!” and carried on.

  Or the hemorrhoidal examination. Good taste forbids too graphic a description, but it did involve rows of youths bent over and clutching their ankles while a demonic physician crouched over as well and ran along behind the rows with a pointed flashlight.

  Or the injections, ahh, yes the injections. As this particular line crept forward I became aware that the youth in front of me was a bodybuilder of some sort. Among the pipestem arms and knocking knees his bronzed biceps and polished pects stood out as a monument to masculinity. He turned to me with a worried expression on the knotted muscles of his face.

  “I don’t like needles,” he said. “Who does,” I agreed.

  Not nice at any time, positively threatening in mass attack. I watched, horrified, as I approached the point of no return. As each shivering body came into position an orderly on each side injected each upper arm. No sooner were the needles hurled aside than the victim was pushed in the back by the uniformed supervising brute. After tottering a few paces forward two more injections were made. Arms curled with pain the subject leaned on the nearby counter. Where he was vaccinated. Very efficient.

  Too efficient for the weightlifter. As he stepped into position his eyes rolled up and he slumped unconscious to the floor. This, however, was no obstacle to military efficiency. Two needles flashed, two injections were made. The sergeant seized him by the feet and dragged him forward where, after receiving the rest of his injections, he was rolled aside to recover. I gritted my teeth, tried stoically to accept the puncturing barrage, and sighed.

  M

  Hairy HafrisoM

  At some point the mass medical examination ended with a final assault on whatever shards of personal dignity the victims might still have left. Still nude, still clutching our plastic bags in our left hands, our thickening folders in our right, we shuffled forward in yet one more line. A row of numbered desks stretched across the width of the room, very much like the reception hall of an airport. Behind each desk sat a dark-suited gent. When it was my turn the sergeant-herdsman glanced over his shoulder and stabbed a stumpy finger at me.

  “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.”

  “Food will be rotten,” he whined self-indulgently. “Nobody can cook like my Morn. She makes the best cepkukoj in the whole world.”

  Onion cakes? What sort of bizarre diet had this stripling enjoyed? “Put that all behind you,” I chirped. “If the army bakes cepkukoj they will be foul, count on that. But think of the other pleasures.. Plenty of exercise, fresh air—and you can curse all the time, drink alcohol and talk smutty about girls!”

  He blushed ardently, his splayed ears glowing like banners. “I wouldn’t talk about girls! And I know how to drink. Me and Jpjo went behind the barn once and drank beer and cursed and threw up.”

  “Whee—” I sighed and was saved from future futile conversation by the appearance of a sergeant. He slammed open the door from the front cabin and roared his command. “Alright you kretenoj—on your feet!”

  He assured instant obedience by hitting a button on the wall that collapsed our seats. There were screams and moans of pain, writhing purple confusion on the deck as the recruits fell on top of each other. I was the only one standing and I caught the full force of the sergeant’s sizzling glare.

  “What are you—a wise guy or sometin’?”

  “No, sir! Just obeying orders, sir!” Saying this I leaped into the air slapping my arms to my sides, stamping my feet heavily as I landed, then delivered a snappy salute—so snappy I almost put my eye out. The sergeant’s eyes bulged in return at this display before he was lost from sight by the rising, milling bodies.

  “Quiet! Attention! Hands at sides, feet together, stomachs in, chests out, chins back, eyes forward—and stop breathing!”

  The purple ranks swayed and writhed into this absurd military stance, then were still. Silence descended as the sergeant glared around with dark suspicion.

  “Did I hear someone breathe? No breathing until I tell you to. The first cagalhead who breathes gets my fist where it will do the most good. ”

  The silence lengthened. Purple figures stirred as incipient asphyxiation took hold. One recruit moaned and fell to the deck; I’ breathed silently through my nostrils. There was a gasp as one of the lads could hold out no longer. The sergeant surged forward and the spot where a fist will do the most good turned out to be the pit of the stomach. The victim screamed and fell and all the others gasped in life-giving air. ”.

  “That was a little lesson!” the sergeant screeched. “Did you get the message?”

  “Yes,” I muttered under my breath. “You’re a sadomasochist. “

  “The lesson is that I give the orders, you obey them—or you get stomped.” Having delivered this repulsive communication his face writhed, his lips pulled back to reveal yellowed teeth; it took a long moment for me to realize this was supposed to be a smile.

  “Sit down men, make yourselves comfortable.” On the steel deck? The seats were still stowed. I sat with the rest while the sergeant amicably patted the roll of fat that hung over his belt. “My name is Klutz, Drill-sergeant Klutz. But you will not address me by my name which is for the use of those of equal rank or higher. You will call me sergeant, sir, or master. You will be humble, obedient, reverent and quiet. If you are not you will be punished. I will not tell you what the punishment will be because I have eaten recently and do not wish to upset my stomach.” Astir of fear passed through the audience at the thought of what might possibly upset that massive gut.

  “One punishment is usually enough to– break the spirit of even the most reluctant recruit. However, occasionally, a recruit will need a second punishment. Still more rarely a hardened resister will require a third punishment. But there is no third punishment. Would you like to know why there is no third punishment?”

  The red eyes glared down and we all wished that we were somepla
ce, anyplace, else at this moment.

  “Since you are too dim to ask why, I will tell you. Third time is out. Third time is being stuffed, kicking and screaming and begging for your mommy, into the dehydration chamber where ninety-nine point nine nine percent of all your precious bodily fluids will be removed with a dry whishing sound. Do you know what you will look like then? You will look like this!” ’

  He reached into his pocket and took out a tiny dehydrated figure of a recruit in a tiny dehydrated uniform, the features on its tiny face fixed forever in lines of terror. Moans of fear sighed from the soldiers and there were a number of thuds as the weakest dropped unconscious. Sergeant Klutz smiled.

  “Yes, you will look just like this. Your tiny dry body will then be hung on the barracks bulletin board for a month as a warning to the others. After that your body will be put in a padded mailing envelope and sent to your parents, along with a toy shovel to assist in burial. Now—are there any questions?”

  “Please, sir,” a quavering voice asked. “Is the dehydration process instant and painless or drawn-out and terrible?”

  “Good question. After your first day in the army—do you have any doubt which it will be?”

  More moans and unconscious thuds followed. The sergeant nodded approval. “Alright. Let me tell you what happens next. We are going to the RTCS at MMB. That means the Recruit Training Camp Slimmarco at Mortstertoro Military Base. You will take your basic training. This training will turn you from feeble civilian wimps into sturdy, loyal, reverent soldiers. Some of you will wash out of basic training and will be buried with full military honors. Remember that. There is no way back. You will become good soldiers or you will become dead. You will understand that the military is hard but fair.”