Гарри Гаррисон - Bill, the Galactic Hero [= The Starsloggers]

“That story is true.” A moan broke from the row of recruits, and they shook as though a chill wind had passed over them. The smile vanished.

“We will run to breakfast now as soon as I have some volunteers for an easy assignment. Can any of you drive a helicar?” Two recruits hopefully raised their hands, and he beckoned them forward.

“All right, both of you, mops and buckets behind that door. Clean out the latrine while the rest are eating. You'll have a better appetite for lunch.” That was Bill's second lesson on how to be a good trooper: never volunteer.

The days of recruit training passed with a horribly lethargic speed.

With each day conditions became worse and Bill's exhaustion greater. This seemed impossible, but it was nevertheless true. A large number of gifted and sadistic minds had designed it to be that way. The recruits' heads were shaved for uniformity. The food was theoretically nourishing but incredibly vile and when, by mistake, one batch of meat was served in an edible state it was caught at the last moment and thrown out and the cook reduced two grades. Their sleep was broken by mock gas attacks and their free time filled with caring for their equipment. The seventh day was designated as a day of rest, but they all had received punishments, like Bill's KP, and it was as any other day. On this, the third Sunday of their imprisonment, they were stumbling through the last hour of the day before the lights were extinguished and they were finally permitted to crawl into their casehardened bunks. Bill pushed against the weak force field that blocked the door, cunningly designed to allow the desert flies to enter but not leave the barracks, and dragged himself in. After fourteen hours of KP his legs vibrated with exhaustion, and his arms were wrinkled and pallid as a corpse's from the soapy water. He dropped his jacket to the floor, where it stood stiffly supported by its burden of sweat, grease, and dust, and dragged his shaver from his footlocker.

In the latrine he bobbed his head around trying to find a clear space on one of the mirrors. All of them had been heavily stenciled in large letters with such inspiring messages as KEEP YOUR WUG SHUT‑THE CHINGERS ARE LISTENING and IF YOU TALK THIS MAN MAY DIE. He finally plugged the shaver in next to WOULD YOU WANT YOUR SISTER TO MARRY ONE? and centered his face in the o in ONE.

Black‑rimmed and bloodshot eyes stared back at him as he ran the buzzing machine over the underweight planes of his jaw. It took more than a minute for the meaning of the question to penetrate his fatigue‑drugged brain.

“I haven't got a sister,” he grumbled peevishly, “and if I did, why should she want to marry a lizard anyway?” It was a rhetorical question, but it brought an answer from the far end of the room, from the last shot tower in the second row.

“It doesn't mean exactly what it says‑it's just there to make us hate the dirty enemy more.”.

Bill jumped, he had thought he was alone in the latrine, and the razor buzzed spitefully and gouged a bit of flesh from his lip.

“Who's there? Why are you hiding?” he snarled, then recognized the huddled dark figure and the many pairs of boots. “Oh, it's only you, Eager.” His anger drained away, and he turned back to the mirror.

Eager Beager was so much a part of the latrine that you forgot he was there.

A moon‑faced, eternally smiling youth, whose apple‑red cheeks never lost their glow and whose smile looked so much out of place here in Camp Leon Trotsky that everyone wanted to kill him until they remembered that he was mad. He had to be mad because he was always eager to help his buddies and had volunteered as permanent latrine orderly. Not only that, but he liked to polish boots and had offered to do those of one after another of his buddies until now he did the boots for every man in the squad every night. Whenever they were in the barracks Eager Beager could be found crouched at the end of the thrones that were his personal domain, surrounded by the heaps of shoes and polishing industriously, his face wreathed in smiles. He would still be there after lights‑out, working by the light of a burning wick stuck in a can of polish, and was usually up before the others in the morning, finishing his voluntary job and still smiling. Sometimes, when the boots were very dirty, he worked right through the night. The kid was obviously insane, but noone turned him in because he did such a good job on the boots, and they all prayed that he wouldn't die of exhaustion until recruit training was finished.

“Well if that's what they want to say, why don't they just say, `Hate the dirty enemy more,"' Bill complained. He jerked his thumb at the far wall, where there was a poster labeled KNOW THE ENEMY. It featured a life‑sized illustration of a Chinger, a seven‑foot‑high saurian that looked very much like a scale‑covered, four‑armed, green kangaroo with an alligator's head. “Whose sister would want to marry a thing like that anyway? And what would a thing like that want to do with a sister, except maybe eat her?” Eager put a last buff on a purple toe and picked up another boot. He frowned for a brief instant to show what a serious thought this was. “Well you see, gee‑it doesn't mean a real sister. It's just part of psychological warfare.

We have to win the war. To win the war we have to fight hard. In order to fight hard we have to have good soldiers. Good soldiers have to hate the enemy.

That's the way it goes. The Chingers are the only non‑human race that has been discovered in the galaxy that has gone beyond the aboriginal level, so naturally we have to wipe them out.” “What the hell do you mean, naturally? I don't want to wipe anyone out.

I just want to go home and be a Technical Fertilizer Operator.” “Well, I don't mean you personally, of course‑gee!” Eager opened a fresh can of polish with purple‑stained hands and dug his fingers into it. “I mean the human race, that's just the way we do things. If we don't wipe them out they'll wipe us out. Of course they say that war is against their religion and they will only fight in defense, and they have never made any attacks yet.

But we can't believe them, even though it is true. They might change their religion or their minds some day, and then where would we be? The best answer is to wipe them out now.” Bill unplugged his razor and washed his face in the tepid, rusty water.

“It still doesn't seem to make sense. All right, so the sister I don't have doesn't marry one of them. But how about that “ he pointed to the stenciling on the duck boards, KEEP THIS SHOWER CLEAR‑THE ENEMY CAN HEAR. “Or that‑” The sign above the urinal that read BUTTON FLIES‑BEWARE SPIES. “Forgetting for the moment that we don't have any secrets here worth traveling a mile to hear, much less twenty‑five light years‑how could a Chinger possibly be a spy?

What kind of make‑up would disguise a seven‑foot lizard as a recruit? You couldn't even disguise one to look like Deathwish Drang, though you could get pretty close‑” The lights went out, and, as though using his name had summoned him like a devil from the pit, the voice of Deathwish blasted through the barracks.

“Into your sacks! Into your sacks! Don't you lousy bowbs know there's a war on!” Bill stumbled away through the darkness of the barracks where the only illumination was the red glow from Deathwish's eyes. He fell asleep the instant his head touched his carborundum pillow, and it seemed that only a moment had elapsed before reveille sent him hurtling from his bunk. At breakfast, while he was painfully cutting his coffee‑substitute into chunks small enough to swallow, the telenews reported heavy fighting in the Beta Lyra sector with mounting losses. A groan rippled through the mess hall when this was announced, not because of any excess of patriotism but because any bad news would only make things worse for them. They did not know how this would be arranged, but they were positive it would be. They were right. Since the morning was a bit cooler than usual the Monday parade was postponed until upon when the ferro‑concrete drill ground would have warmed up nicely and there would be the maximum number of heat‑prostration cases. But this was just the beginning.