Damon Knight - Orbit 15

Willie wrote in his notebook, AN/M65A1 . . . general purpose . . . 1000 lb ... dropped from the skies.

Jennings continued his lecture. Along with the first bomb was a medium-sized bomb, which Jennings identified as an Alpha November slash Mike Seven Eight five-hundred-pound nonpersistent gas bomb. The third bomb was a small Alpha November slash Mike Eight Eight two-hundred-twenty-pound fragmentation bomb. Willie noted all three, then thought about making a sketch of each. They looked pretty much the same to him, except for their different sizes. In that case, he decided, the sketches would be relatively pointless. Thinking the lecture must be over, Willie closed his notebook. Jennings hadn’t finished, however.

“Ah, yes, ladies and gentlemen,” said Jennings sternly, a sneer as evident in his tone of voice as in his expression, “will any of you tell me what is meant by a ‘general-purpose bomb’?”

Not one member of the audience ventured a reply. Jennings slapped his thigh impatiently. Willie looked over toward Sam’s seat; he thought about the other men that sat between them. When the lectures ended and they all marched back to their cells, Willie had noticed that some of the men whispered to Sam in the halls. He had never seen one of the men touch her. That would be too much. He had once hurried through the crowd to catch up to one of the creeps; Willie had seen the man bend forward during a lecture and make some comment to Sam. She had not reacted, not even made a gesture of annoyance. Still, afterward, Willie had followed the man and pushed him against the gray concrete-block wall. Willie had made it seem like an accident, in case anyone was watching. In a few seconds he had doubled the man over with three quick blows, then vanished into the streaming crowd. Willie hated the kind of creeps that leered at his wife.

“If no one can devise an adequate response,” said Jennings in a slow, quiet voice, “we may have to cancel all reinforcement rations. We may even have to schedule additional punishment.” One man, thirty-eight ranks in front of Willie and twenty-seven to his right, stood and nervously indicated that he had an answer. “Go on, Larry,” said Jennings. “Let’s hear it.”

“An all-purpose bomb is one that, well, like you said, you drop it from a plane,” said Larry. “You’re trying to destroy or at least hurt some kind of target. You’re trying to blow the thing up. The target, I mean. As opposed to photoflash bombs or gas bombs or like that.”

“No,” said Jennings. “Not ‘all-purpose bomb.’ The term is ‘general-purpose bomb.’ I’m sorry, Larry. Your answer was good enough to get the rest of these clowns off the hook. I’m sure you’re happy to hear that, ladies and gentlemen. But, Larry, I’m afraid it wasn’t precise enough to get you off the hook. Now, now, ladies and gentlemen, no rustles of annoyance. Let’s have no little murmurs of pique, out there.” Jennings laughed briefly. He nodded to a man uniformed in gray, who was standing near one of the exits at the front of the room. The man walked to Larry’s seat and escorted him from the room. There were no further whispers or sounds from the audience.

Willie watched his wife’s head, now bent over her notebook in study. The man sitting behind Sam, the same man Willie had beaten on the previous occasion, slouched in his seat. Willie still didn’t like the way that guy looked.

“All right,” said Jennings, “get the hell out of here.”

The audience stood up and began walking toward the exits. Willie flipped his notebook open again; the notes that he had taken on Jennings’ lecture were already gone. He shrugged, closed the notebook, and tried to catch up to Sam.

The alarm bell rang, and Sam woke up. She yawned and stretched, then remembered that it was Sevenday morning. She hated Sevendays; she always wondered why Jennings couldn’t let them sleep a little later. They didn’t have any work to do, after all. She put her head back on the pillow and waited for Grigarskas to come by. Sam’s cell was still dark. It was about half an hour before sunrise; the lights on top of the gray walls around the yard were already turned off. She felt warm and sleepy.

“All right, Sam,” shouted a woman on the other side of the cell door. “Let’s get going. You may be a Lion, all right, but the rituals won’t wait for no Lion. Get your ass moving.”

“I’m up, Miss Grigarskas,” said Sam, unhappily throwing back the thin gray blanket and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. It was Sevenday. Time for rituals. Then reinforcement—and punishment.

Sam dressed quickly. She brushed her hair and splashed a little water in her face from the pitcher on her bureau. Then she went to the window that occupied the entire wall opposite the door. The window was made of plastic, a single thick sheet of the stuff, mounted slablike in the gray concrete blocks of the building. It wouldn’t break; it was about eight inches thick, and when Sam put her palms against it, it was very cold. All she could see was the high wall across the yard. She couldn’t see anything beyond the wall. The yard itself was patched with blackness and lighter areas of gray, some fifty stories below her.

Sam left her cell and joined the crowd of women in the hall. They were all walking quickly toward the elevators. The Sevenday rituals were held in the vast assembly hall in the lower part of the same building in which she attended Oneday, Threeday, and Fiveday lectures. The hall was large enough to accommodate everyone from every dorm building. The hall was so immense that a person standing in its center could see none of its walls. From that vantage point, it was like standing on a dim, featureless plain. Only the checkerboard pattern of tiles on the floor reminded one that the room was, after all, inside a still larger building.

Sam was proud that she was a Lion. Willie, her husband, was only a Raven, and their friend Mac was a Soldier, one level below Sam. Few of the other women in Sam’s dorm had risen above Occult, the second level in the ritual.

During the walk from her dorm to the assembly hall, Sam wondered if she would see Willie during the ritual. They would likely get together later; it seemed probable to her that they would receive reinforcement, because of their performance on the football field in the Fourday game. Sam hoped that Willie wouldn’t do anything to disrupt the ritual; his angry jealousy had caused him to start fighting right in the middle of the Sevenday services. It had happened several times, and each occasion cost him whatever progress he had made through the levels. He always had to begin over again, as a Raven. It never seemed to bother him, but it caused Sam private embarrassment.

Sam entered the assembly hall. On the seven large doorways were repeated murals showing Mithra slaying the bull. Inside, the gigantic hall filled her with awe, as it did every Sevenday. She took her place with her fellows, the other men and women who held the rank of Lion. While she waited for everyone to arrive, she looked toward the vast congregation of Ravens, hoping to see Willie. She couldn’t find him in the crowd.

Jennings entered after a short while, dressed in the white and gold robes of the Pater patratus. “Nama, Nama Sebesio,” he called.

“Nama, Nama Sebesio,” answered the congregation. Jennings then ritually greeted each group, beginning with the other Patres. He gave each degree its particular and secret sign, and he was acknowledged by the chief of that degree. After the Patres, Jennings saluted the Runners of the Sun, the Persians, the Lions, the Soldiers, the Occults, and finally, the Ravens.

The ritual itself held little interest for Sam. She had never had any enthusiasm for it, and even less faith in the meaning of it all. She thought of other things, and made her responses out of habit. After quite a long time, Jennings gave the crowd his Sevenday benediction and walked slowly from the hall, attended by seven groups of seven Patres. A bell was rung when he had left the assembly hall, the signal that the remainder of the congregation was free to depart. Sam sighed, and hurried toward the group of Ravens. Willie met her; Sam put her arms around his neck and kissed him. He frowned. “Not here, Sam,” he said.