King of the World

by Thomas Berger

  “Now hear this,” she said. “Anyone caught talking during the picture will be dealt with.” Cornell saw Sergeant Peters rise at the end of the row and glare at her group.

  The lights were extinguished, and the picture came on the screen in glaring color, accompanied by a lively show-tune played by an invisible string orchestra. A litle group of young men, in the Sperm Service uniform, were seen sitting in a lounge full of chintz-covered furniture. They smiled, chattered, and passed a dish of what looked like foil-covered bonbons.

  Over this scene a title began to appear, as if being written by an invisible pen, in flowing pink script: Introducing the Sperm Service is what it said when finished.

  The benevolent voice of a female narrator was heard.

  “You boys are about to embark on an enchanting voyage.” At which the men on the screen turned and giggled at the camera. One of them popped a bonbon into his mouth and licked the fingers that had held it.

  “This picture is a travelogue of that voyage. Come along!” A roly-poly fat sergeant came into the lounge, smiled at the men, and then took in her pudgy hand the square chin of one husky blond. “You look so sweet today, Maxie.” Maxie simpered. “I think I’ll put you at the top of the class.”

  Maxie gasped happily and rose. She took his hand, and the camera followed them through a flower-stenciled door, which opened by an unseen agency.

  “The other boys,” said the narrator, “are a wee bit jealous, boys being boys. But they know their turns will come. And they also know that dear old Sarge Winters, a twenty-year veteran of the Sperm Service cadre, loves all her lads.”

  Now Winters and Maxie were in a room with pale-blue wallpaper and a cerise rug. A kind of sitz bath of turquoise plastic occupied one corner. The sergeant proved it was full of water by dipping in one fat finger. Since there were no faucets on it, Cornell wondered how it had been filled. There was a false sort of tone to this whole thing.

  When the camera next went to Maxie, he was magically wearing a semitransparent pink peignoir, which parted to the knee as he lifted his large foot and gingerly touched the big toe to the surface of the liquid.

  “Oo.”

  “Too hot?” The sergeant was concerned.

  “Oh, no. It’s dreamy.”

  His back to the camera, the sergeant taking off the peignoir and holding it to screen his descent, Maxie lowered himself into the bath.

  The violins played, Maxie’s blissful face was seen in closeup, eyelids softly lowering. Then Sarge Winters’ genial dewlaps were seen, then a bowlful of tea roses, then back to a view of Sarge bundling Maxie in a huge fluffy pink towel.

  “Would you believe,” asked the narrator, “that this is all there is to it? Well, it is! Maxie will now have a lovely meal in the recently redecorated dining room, take a nap in his comfy bed, and be ready for the usual evening of fun: a new hit musical, a fashion show of the season’s collections. On other nights there is discotheque dancing, or a famous name from the world of coiffure will give a demonstration hairstyling, a body-specialist will give figure analyses.

  “Your sperm term is so many things. You are doing your duty. You are serving your country. You are making new friends. You are realizing your potential as men. And you are having fun!”

  The music swelled up once again, and across the broad figure of Maxie, who, swaddled in his pink towel, smiled beatifically, the pink script began to appear: Produced by the Sperm Service, U.S. Army Medical Corps, Department of Survival.

  Cornell had been summoned to the company commander’s office. He arrived there with some trepidation. Had he already been spotted as a troublemaker?

  A swarthy first sergeant told him to wait, but hardly had he sat down on the camp chair than a woman in olive-drab trousers and shirt, two silver bars on one side of the collar and a caduceus on the other, emerged from an inner office.

  She wore a stern, feminine sort of smile. Cornell tried to keep his chin up and his gaze guiltless.

  “Georgie Alcorn?”

  He nodded timorously.

  “Come in, please.”

  A stark, military room, containing only a desk, its chair, and a cardboard carton on the floor behind. The captain sat down. Cornell stood rigidly so as to inhibit an impulse to tremble.

  “Relax,” said the captain. “At rest, as we say in the women’s army.” She had wavy brown hair in the short Army cut, shaved clean for an inch above the ears. “Alcorn,” she said, head down, examining some papers. “Alcorn, I’ve had some reports on you already.”

  Cornell covered his mouth.

  The captain looked up with a genial grin. “Very good reports, Alcorn. You seem to be a natural leader, with unusual presence for a man. I like that. You’re not one of the typical simpering young boys we usually get. I see you’re almost twenty-five, just under the wire. But the real stuff doesn’t just come automatically with age.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The captain frowned abstractly. “Alcorn, I don’t have an easy job here. Sometimes I’d rather be back with the shrapnel, mortar bursts, and booby traps in Rumania—I left a hand there.” She lifted her left arm and showed the rounded pink stump at the cuff.

  “Oh,” Cornell began, “I’m terribly—”

  She cut him off. “No, no, not I’m a soldier, Alcorn. I knew what I was getting into, and I brought back a DSC.” She waved the stump once in a counterclockwise circuit, then put it away.

  “I didn’t bring you here to boast of my exploits. Alcorn, I’ve found in handling men that a woman can go only so far. It’s finally a matter of biology, I think. Boys have secret places in their characters which only another male can really understand. Now, we could be absolute tyrants here, but we don’t want to be except as a last resort. It works out better for all concerned if things run well, if the boys don’t just perform their duties as a kind of drudgery into which they’ve been forced, but willingly, even enthusiastically. It makes my job easier, and time flies for them. Before they know it, their term is up and they all go home—enriched, really.”

  The captain frowned. “But it’s another story if sullenness develops, or hysteria, spitefulness, and so on—the sort of emotional problems that invariably crop up when men are in the company of their own sex for very long.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What I’m getting to, Alcorn, is: I want you to be barracks leader for your, uh, barracks. This post carries no extra money but considerable authority. In fact, you will be just under Sergeant Peters in the chain of command—unofficially, in a technical sense; naturally, the AR’s and AWs both specifically forbid the official appointment of any male person to a position of authority—I refer to the Army Regulations and Articles of War.” She held her head back and looked up her nose at Cornell.

  “But in a meaningful way, you will be part of this line of power, and in Peters’ absence will be responsible for executing her orders, which, of course, may in many cases emanate higher up, higher than me, even, from the colonel or the divisional general, and so on, and maybe eventually the Secretary of Survival and even the President”

  The captain plunged her only hand into the cardboard box behind the desk. Cornell had assumed it was a container for waste paper. She brought from it a little hat, a cloche, in canary-yellow felt, the crown encircled by a green grosgrain ribbon, its split ends trailing at the rear.

  “This is the barracks leader’s badge of authority: the B.L. bonnet. We think it’s quite attractive, and I’ve never heard of a boy who disagreed.” She handed it across to him. “Try it on.”

  Cornell found the issue compact in his shoulder bag and, having blown the powder off the mirror, looked at himself. It was actually quite cute.

  “Cute,” said the captain. “You have a sweet face, Alcorn.”

  When Cornell glanced at her over the open compact, she cleared her throat and spoke gruffly.

  “I’ve decided you should be B.L. of your barracks, Alcorn. I hope you agree. Now, report to Sergeant Peters.” Sh
e lowered her head and began to leaf through the papers.

  Back at the barracks, the yellow cloche caused the movement of heads, first to look, then to reverse in jealousy. Only Howie and Gordie were generous, both smiling in admiration, the latter saying: “How darling!” Even sycophantic Jackie’s nose was out of joint. “I didn’t get a hat,” he said. “I never get anything.”

  Cornell did not dare to ascertain whether Farley, whose bed was across the aisle, was present and looking. He explained his new position to the three friends.

  “It’s somewhat embarrassing. Imagine me giving orders.” Yet he already felt a sense of power from merely being in the position in which he could wonder at it.

  Young Howie said: “Oh, you’ll be marvelous!” And blond Gordie shrugged his big shoulders. “I know the boys would rather have you do it than that awful Sergeant Peters.”

  “Will they?” asked Cornell, cocking his head. “Will they?”

  A brunet on the way back from the lavatory stared at the hat, sniffed, and flipped his face in the other direction.

  Jackie was sitting in a depressed attitude on the edge of his bunk. He coughed. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

  Cornell said: “I’m supposed to report to Peters. The captain didn’t spell out my duties.”

  Gordie patted his shoulder in a sweet way. Jackie sneezed.

  The sergeant’s quarters were in a little private room at the end of the barracks. She had her own bathroom there, but was given occasionally to appearing in the men’s lavatories, presumably on inspection. But of what? She had a randy eye.

  Cornell knocked on her door and was answered by a coarse “Yeahhhh?” He gave his name. “Oh, come in!”

  She lay in T-shirt and trousers on her bunk, reading a comic book and smoking a cigar the odor of which was so filthy that Cornell feared he might swoon. With his scented handkerchief he fanned a channel through the blue cloud.

  “I’ve been sent here by the cap—” He coughed violently. “She appointed me—”

  “B.L.,” said Peters, grinning. “On my recommendation.” She swung her stockinged feet to the floor, sucked a mouthful of smoke, and expelled it in a blast which mushroomed off the far wall, on which were scotch-taped several magazine photos of boys in frilly black underwear and garterbelted black hose.

  Peters patted the cot alongside her thick thigh. “Take the weight off.” Cornell sat down near the end. He found her physically repellent, and he could use such air as entered the door, which he had left ajar.

  “I picked you out, Alcorn. I like your style.” She put the slimy end of the cigar between her lips and spoke around it. “I don’t mind your looks, either. Haw, haw!” She held up two fingers. “You and me have to work together.” She scissored the fingers to demonstrate. “These kids need a strong hand—me. And a velvet glove—you. This is the first time some of them have been away from a school dormitory, ya know? Now lemme tellya what I wancha to do: you’ll be responsible for gettin ’em up in the morning. That’s reveille—not the real reveille we got in the women’s army, with the bugle and all, and falling out on some cold morning that freezes your ass. Lucky you were born with a dong, Alcorn!”

  Peters guffawed again and moved herself nearer Cornell, near enough to reach his knee with her gross paw. Cornell adjusted his bonnet and moved subtly away.

  “Then you march ’em two abreast, like you seen me do, to the mess hall for breakfast. Don’t count cadence or anything. We used to try a real military march, but men can’t keep in step worth a shit—we had everybody stumbling and tripping, so it’s a just a nice, easy walk now. After breakfast you lead ’em right to the classes, the interpretive dancing, needlework, and so on—I’ll give you the mimeo’d schedule, but in a day or two you’ll have it in your head. Same thing, the rest of the day.”

  Cornell was wondering what duties Peters reserved for herself: at this rate he seemed to be doing everything. Perhaps she sensed this: she moved closer to him and handled his knee again.

  “I’ll take over on collection days.”

  “Collection?” He hadn’t much more of the bunk to slide to.

  “The semen, kiddo! That’s why you’re here, remember?” She leaned across and kicked the door shut with her left foot, which meant she was already on him. She clasped his neck, whipped the cigar from her yellow teeth, and pressed two tobacco-tarred lips upon his startled mouth. He went backwards and banged his bonneted head against the wall. His legs flew apart, and her hand shot under his buttocks, squeezing them painfully. She was of a formidable weight, the unresistant soggy kind. Nevertheless, with a sudden out-breath he threw her off, and onto the floor.

  He was ready to regret that, when she came up grinning.

  “Hard to get, huh? I like that, Alcorn. And I can wait. I’m going to plug you, kiddo. Never doubt that.” She breathed stertorously from exertion and lust.

  Cornell stood up, adjusted his B.L. bonnet, and stepped daintily around the sergeant.

  “I’m sure we’ll work together very well,” he said softly, and left the room in a neat, precise stride, almost colliding with Farley, who was just outside the door.

  Farley’s eyes were not serene. Had he been spying? Cornell would have liked to slap his ratty little face. Instead, he smiled.

  Farley glared at him, and then at the cloche.

  “What an awful color,” he said. “Pee-yellow.”

  Cornell put a finger to his own lips. “Shhh!” He pulled Farley a few feet into the main barracks room and whispered: “You’ll get in trouble, dear, if she hears you. This is supposed to be an honor.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want it,” Farley said spitefully. He looked as if he might cry at any moment.

  Cornell linked arms with him. He was stronger than Farley, and forced him to walk along the aisle.

  “Don’t think I want it,” he said. “But I don’t like to make waves. They can be terribly brutal, you know. And the rest of the boys are pretty pitiful, not like you and me, dear. We must do what we can for them.”

  “Why?” Farley looked indignantly through the side of his dark hair.

  “They’re our fellow men.”

  “Screw them,” said Farley. “No man has ever done anything for me.”

  “How many women have?”

  Farley’s lower lip came out. They had reached his bed, and Cornell released him. Farley sat down on the cot and put his disconsolate face in his hands.

  Cornell said: “Farley, I wish you’d be my friend.”

  Farley looked up, his eyes disturbed by mixed emotions.

  “Well,” said Cornell, “think about it, anyway.”

  He turned and started across the aisle.

  “Georgie,” said Farley. Cornell turned back. “I’m sorry I was bitchy. The hat is really very cute on you.” He colored and averted his face.

  Cornell sighed inwardly. He wondered how often he would have to go through this sort of farce. Men!

  He crossed the aisle. Jackie was sitting on his, Cornell’s, cot: he didn’t like that.

  “How did it go?” asked Jackie.

  “O.K.” He decided not to tell of his experience with Sergeant Peters. He wondered whether Peters would think he had. Some women liked to be known as Dona Juanas, on the theory that men, masochistic conformists, were more easily overwhelmed if psyched by a reputation. Peters was very likely just such a brute.

  He kept his account to a mere statement of his duties.

  “How are you going to wake up on time?” Jackie asked, leaning back on one hand, just as if it were his own bed.

  Cornell frowned. “Jackie, would you mind—”

  Jackie said: “I’ve got it!” He went to the wardrobe behind the beds, pulled aside the flowered curtain, and came out with a little yellow alarm clock, the face of which was a clown’s; the hands were representations of a clown’s gloved fingers, the index outthrust, and one arm shorter than the other. It was a child’s timepiece. Jackie was so silly, but he really was goodhear
ted and impossible to hate.

  All in all, Cornell had not made a bad beginning for his mission. He had made several friends. He had the confidence and approval of the authorities. He even had an official function. He felt sure he could continue successfully to resist Peters, and he suspected that the captain also had a gentlewomanly letch for him.

  He was supposed to report once a week to the Movement, as well as at any time of emergency. Oddly enough, this was to be done by telephone. There was actually a phone line into the underground headquarters; not a properly sanctioned one, but a tap from the basement connection of offices in the building above, namely those of Huff House. The telephone service was normally so awful that this went unsuspected—as did everything else in the old subway tunnel, so far as he could tell, confirming the Movement theory that the tyranny of women was exceeded only by their inefficiency.

  Cornell wondered privately why, then, men remained the underdogs. But he would no more ask that of Stanley or even Frankie than he would ask Sergeant Peters how she expected to conquer him physically when he was a head taller than she and in much better condition.

  The next morning he was awakened by his own internal clock thirty minutes before Jackie’s alarm was scheduled to sound. Instead of rolling over for another half hour’s snooze, which he would certainly have done without the B.L. bonnet, Cornell got up, shaved face, chest, and armpits, and did his face. His eyes were simpler than in the old days: almost no shadow and softer with the liner, a style that seemed better to suit the new nose. He was coming to accept that revision, no longer pinching it gently in wonderment.

  Jerry really was a remarkable surgeon, considering the crude conditions under which he performed—considering that he was a man. Cornell had once forgotten himself and said that to Frankie. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t changed that much, if at all. Sometimes he just had to be realistic: there must be some reason why women ran the world, because they did. Not even the Brothers could deny that.

  Frankie had grimaced and said: “Georgie, Georgie, you’re just going to have to work harder on your values.” Then he went into the familiar historical theory by which the Movement sought to explain everything: that men had once had power but lost it through pity for women. Blah-blah, blah.