Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - The Sirens of Titan

Unk guessed that was a good way for an army to be. At the hospital they gave Unk a small sample of the pain his antenna would stick him with if he ever did anything wrong.

The pain was horrible.

Unk was bound to admit that a soldier would be crazy not to do his duty at all times.

At the hospital they had said the most important rule of all was this one: Always obey a direct order without a moment's hesitation.

Standing there in formation on the iron parade ground, Unk realized that he had a lot to relearn. At the hospital they hadn't taught him everything there was to know about living.

The antenna in his head brought him to attention again and his mind went blank. Then the antenna put Unk at parade rest again, then at attention again, then made him give a rifle salute, then put him at ease again.

His thinking began again. He caught another glimpse of the world around him.

Life was like that, Unk told himself tentatively - blanks and glimpses, and now and then maybe that awful flash of pain for doing something wrong.

A small, low-flying, fast-flying moon sailed in the violet sky overhead. Unk didn't know why he thought so, but he thought the moon was moving too fast. It didn't seem right. And the sky, he thought, should be blue instead of violet.

Unk felt cold, too, and he longed for more warmth. The unending cold seemed as wrong, as unfair, somehow, as the fast moon and the violet sky.

Unk's divisional commander was now talking to Unk's regimental commander. Unk's regimental commander spoke to Unk's battalion commander. Unk's battalion commander spoke to Unk's company commander. Unk's company commander spoke to Unk's platoon leader, who was Sergeant Brackman.

Brackman came up to Unk and ordered him to march up to the man at the stake jn a military manner and strangle him until he was dead.

Brackman told Unk it was a direct order.

So Unk did it.

He marched up to the man at the stake. He marched in time to the dry, tinny music of one snare drum. The sound of the snare drum was really just in his head, coming from his antenna:

Rented a tent, a tent, a tent;

Rented a tent, a tent, a tent.

Rented a tent!

Rented a tent!

Rented a, rented a tent.

When Unk got to the man at the stake, Unk hesitated for just a second - because the red-haired man at the stake looked so unhappy. Then there was a tiny warning pain in Unk's head, like the first deep nip of a dentist's drill.

Unk put his thumbs on the red-haired man's windpipe, and the pain stopped right away. Unk didn't press with his thumbs, because the man was trying to tell him something. Unk was puzzled by the man's silence - and then realized that the man's antenna must be keeping him silent, just as antennas were keeping all of the soldiers silent.

Heroically, the man at the stake now overcame the will of his antenna, spoke rapidly, writhingly. "Unk . . . Unk . . . Unk . . ." he said, and the spasms of the fight between his own will and the will of the antenna made him repeat the name idiotically. "Blue stone, Unk," he said. "Barrack twelve . . . letter."

The warning pain nagged in Unk's head again. Dutifully, Unk strangled the man at the stake - choked him until the man's face was purple and his tongue stuck Out.

Unk stepped back, came to attention, did a smart about-face and returned to his place in ranks - again accompanied by the snare drum in his head:

Rented a tent, a tent, a tent;

Rented a tent, a tent, a tent.

Rented a tent!

Rented a tent!

Rented a, rented a tent.

Sergeant Brackman nodded at Unk, winked affectionately.

Again the ten thousand came to attention. Horribly, the dead man at the stake struggled to come to attention, too, rattling his chains. He failed - failed to be a perfect soldier - not because he didn't want to be one but because he was dead.

Now the great formation broke up into rectangular components. These marched mindlessly away, each man hearing a snare drum in his head. An observer would have heard nothing but the tread of boots.

An observer would have been at a loss as to who was really in charge, since even the generals moved like marionettes, keeping time to the idiotic words:

Rented a tent, a tent, a tent;

Rented a tent, a tent, a tent.

Rented a tent!

Rented a tent!

Rented a, rented a tent.

Unk's formation halted before a granite barrack, before a barrack in a perspective of thousands, a perspective that ran to seeming infinity on the iron plain. Before every tenth barrack was a flagpole with a banner snapping in the keen wind.

The banners were all different.

The banner that fluttered like a guardian angel over Unk's company area was very gay - red and white stripes, and many white stars on a field of blue. It was Old Glory, the flag of the United States of America on Earth.

Down the line was the red banner of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Past that was a wonderful green, orange, yellow, and purple banner, showing a lion holding a sword. It was the flag of Ceylon.

And past that was a red ball on a white field, the flag of Japan.

The banners signified the countries that the various Martian units would attack and paralyze when the war between Mars and Earth began.

Unk saw no banners until his antenna let his shoulders sag, let his joints loosen - let him fall out. He gawked at the long perspective of barracks and flagpoles. The barrack before which he stood had a large number painted over the door. The number was 576.

Some part of Unk found the number fascinating, made Unk study it. Then he remembered the execution - remembered that the red-headed man he had killed had told him something about a blue stone and barrack twelve.

Inside barrack 576, Unk cleaned his rifle, found it an extremely pleasant thing to do. He found, moreover, that he still knew how to take the weapon apart. That much of his memory, at any rate, had not been wiped out at the hospital. It made him furtively happy to suspect that there were probably other parts of his memory that had been missed as well. Why this suspicion should make him furtively happy he didn't know.

He swabbed away at his rifle's bore. His weapon was an 11-millimeter German Mauser, single shot, a type of rifle that made its reputation when used by the Spaniards in the Earthling Spanish-American War. All of the Martian Army's rifles were of about the same vintage. Martian agents, working quietly on Earth, had been able to buy up huge quantities of Mausers and British Enfields and American Springfields for next to nothing.

Unk's squadmates were swabbing their bores, too. The oil smelled good, and the oily patches, twisting through the rifling, resisted the thrust of the cleaning rod just enough to be interesting. There was hardly any talk.

No one seemed to have taken particular notice of the execution. If there had been a lesson in the execution for Unk's squadmates, they were finding the lesson as digestible as Pablum.

There had been only one comment on Unk's participation in the execution, and that had come from Sergeant Brackman. "You done all right, Unk," said Brackrnan.

"Thanks," said Unk.

"This man done all right, didn't he?" Brackman asked Unk's squadmates.

There had been some nods, but Unk had the impression that his squadmates would 'have nodded in response to any positive question, would have, shaken their heads in response to any negative one.