Damon Knight - Orbit 15

“Good day, ladies and gentlemen,” said Jennings. “Good day to you all. I hope you have taken appropriate notes during the course of the last several lectures. The more observant among you will have noticed the trend I have been taking. That is, for the sake of the least observant among you, away from the cruder and more unsophisticated of weapons, through the armaments of intrinsic poetry and beauty, and finally to those implements of war which succeed through their apparent lack of menace. I have chosen this method of discourse for definite reasons. If you cannot understand these reasons, you will have some difficulty with the examination. If you find yourself unable to fathom my purpose, I highly suggest that you seek out the advice of someone among you who does understand. I do not want you to do badly on the examination, and I am sure, very, very sure, that you agree.”

Mac laughed quietly and opened his notebook. On the first page, as blank as all the others in the notebook, he wrote Fiveday Lecture, First Week in September. He clicked his ballpoint pen shut, closed the cover of the notebook and clipped the pen to it, and put the notebook in his lap. Then he yawned and slouched down further in his seat.

“Let us begin,” said Jennings. “I would first like to say that what we have today is obstacles. Obstacles, my ladies and gentlemen. We encounter various kinds of obstacles in life, do we not? Who will say that we do not? Of course we do. We find obstacles in our paths, no matter where those paths may lead. Even if the goal is something as trivial as emptying one’s bladder, sometimes there are obstacles.” Jennings paused, in the event that the audience might want to laugh. There was no laughter. Mac frowned; it was one of Jennings’ rare lapses in taste. Perhaps, though, Mac thought, perhaps the lapse in taste had been intentional, not a lapse at all. Perhaps—

“—imparting knowledge,” Jennings was saying. “A bomb is as good a weapon as any. But it takes no delicacy, no refinement at all to turn a city into scraps and shards. Or an army, for that matter. An airplane is gorgeous, sometimes. Who will deny, who among you, my ladies and my own gentlemen, will deny the utter loveliness of your regular Lockheed Foxtrot slash Niner Four Starfire tactical fighter? You will recall the movies we saw several months ago. You will recall the beauty. If you pause to reflect, it will all come back to you. Still, there are greater attainments within the panoplic field. There is yet the music of genuine cultivated skill.”

Jennings had that, all right, thought Mac. Genuine skill. It was becoming more and more obvious. Jennings’ own behavior had been carefully planned to parallel the development of his lectures on weaponry. When Jennings had discussed bombs, grenades, rifles, and armored vehicles, his manner had been heavy, contemptuous, and authoritarian. When he had lectured on aircraft, submarines, guided missiles, and small arms, he had been almost sensitive and emotional, like the connoisseur of food or art might act toward the absolute idealization of his dreams. Lately, while the topics had changed gradually to gas warfare, guerrilla tactics, and methods of obfuscation and misdirection, Jennings had seemed crafty, sure of himself once more, but more mysterious than he had ever been. Mac understood at last. He wondered if anyone else did. He wondered if the knowledge would be practical.

The discussion of obstacles had begun. Jennings was pointing to a screen on which a slide of old German antitank obstacles was projected. “These are dragon’s teeth, ladies and gentlemen,” said Jennings. “Note them well.” Mac unclipped his pen, opened the cover of his notebook, and wrote Obstacles. “These are, as you see, truncated pyramids of, oh, I would guess reinforced concrete. Does that sound reasonable? Concrete pyramids? What do you think they might be used for? You, there. Chico.” Jennings pointed to a young man in the seventeenth rank.

“They are antitank obstacles, sir,” said Chico.

“Very good,” said Jennings. “Excellent. No punishment this Sevenday for Chico.” Mac shook his head, smiling. He knew that Jennings was only pretending that he had forgotten that he had just finished instructing the audience on the purpose of the obstacles. Jennings’ actions were easier to predict, and that helped ease the constant boredom.

“They put these in rows,” said Jennings. “The teeth in the front are lower than the teeth in the back. That way, a tank running over them is made to tip up. Clever, eh? And subtle, eh? And beautiful in its own way, eh? What do you think, Maureen?”

A woman only a few seats away from Mac stood up. “I quite agree,” she said, and sat down again.

Jennings laughed. “No punishment this Sevenday for Maureen,” he said. Mac knew that, despite those words, Maureen had just as good a chance of being punished as anyone else. Another slide was shown, of double-apron barbed wire. Mac wrote Obstacles again, beneath the previous entry. He stopped listening to Jennings, believing that he had learned all that he could from the man. He spent the rest of the lecture period writing the word Obstacles in single columns down the pages of his notebook.

The warning bell rang. Willie sat up in bed, startled, bleary with sleep. He yawned and stretched; he smiled when he remembered how Jamison Hawke, in the role of Gror the Wild Man, explained his survival in the African jungles: “When I wake up,” said Gror, “I wake up all at once. I don’t lounge comfortably, I don’t rub my eyes. I don’t raise my arms above my head and wonder about how cold the bathroom floor may be. I am awake, and I am deadly, for the jungle is always deadly. If I indulged in the luxury of a slow awakening, it would be my last.” Willie loved the old Gror movies, as foolish as they seemed in the years since their initial popularity. Willie tried to be as much like Gror as he could; the difficulty was that he only remembered about waking up “all at once” after he was already awake. For the thousandth time, Willie realized that were he in Gror’s place, he would have been jungle food a long time ago. He licked the odd, unpleasant taste from his lips and swung his feet over the edge of the bed.

A loud bang sounded on the cell door. “All right, Willie,” came the trusty’s voice. “No time for no little Raven to be all tucked in tight. Get your ass out of that bed.”

“Ass is out,” called Willie, frowning. “Mr. Zepkin, sir.”

“You ain’t kidding.” The man’s high-pitched laugh faded as he went along the hall, checking on the others. Willie stared at the cell door and held his hand out at arm’s length, the fingers spread. Then, slowly, he closed the hand in a fist. It was a very obscene gesture that he had learned from one of Gatelin’s first pictures, The Silver Sergeant.

It was Sevenday morning, clear, dark, the stars cut off abruptly by the top of the gigantic walls, the lights on the rim of those walls already turned off. It would be light soon.

“Here’s the famous Raven, getting dressed for Sevenday rituals, one of his favorite times of the entire week,” murmured Willie. “Here’s the Raven, almost unable to control his excitement, as he skips washing, brushing his teeth, and combing his hair in the nervousness and sincere religious passion that grips him every week at this time.” He spat on his floor, pulled on the special, drab vestment of his rank, and left his cell. The halls were crowded with others on their way to the assembly hall; Willie nodded to some, spoke to few, ignored most. He was already thinking about reinforcement. And about punishment.

The assembly hall itself never failed to annoy him. It was so obviously one of Jennings’ great schemes to impress his audience. Willie was irritated by that; he refused to be intimidated into respecting Jennings. If the man couldn’t do it with his own personality or his own actions, owning a big room sure wasn’t going to do it for him. The great doors with the murals of the tauroctonous Mithra had been flung open, and slowly moving streams of people were passing through. Willie tried to push his way through. “No need to hurry,” he thought. “This is dumb. Just slow down. Everybody’ll get in. Slow down.” But he still pushed, unable to stand the stupid way people ahead of him were walking, staring blankly, wasting his time.