When Odysseus returned from his terror-haunted voyage he spared Penelope’s ears the incredible details of his journey. When Richard Lion-Heart, freed finally from his dungeon, came home from the danger-filled years of the Crusades, he did .not assault Queen Berengaria’s sensibilities with horrorfull anecdotes; he simply greeted her and unlocked her chastity belt. Neither will I, gentle reader, profane your hearing with the dangers and despairs of Bill’s journeyings, for they are beyond imagining. Suffice to say he did it. He reached the T.R.C.
Through red-rimmed eyes he blinked at the sign, TRANSIT RANKERS’ CENTER it said, then had to lean against the wall as relief made his knees weak. He had done it! He had only overstayed his leave by eight days, and that couldn’t matter too much. Soon now he would be back in the friendly arms of the troopers again, away from the endless miles of metal corridors, the constantly rushing crowds, the slipways, slideways, gravdrops, hellavators, suctionlifts, and all the rest. He would get stinking drunk with his buddies and let the alcohol dissolve the memories of his terrible travels, try to forget the endless horror of those days of wandering without food or water or sound of human voice, endlessly stumbling through the. Stygian stacks in the Carbon Paper Levels. It was all behind .him now. He dusted his scruffy uniform, shamefully aware of the rips, crumplings, and missing buttons that defaced it. If he could get into the barracks without being stopped he would change uniforms before reporting to the orderly room.
A few heads turned his way, but he made it all right through the day room and into the barracks. Only his mattress was rolled up, his blankets were-gone and his locker empty. It was beginning to look as though he was in trouble, and trouble in the troopers is never a simple thing. Repressing a cold feeling of despair he washed up a bit in the latrine, took a stiffening drink from the cold tap, then dragged his feet to the orderly room. The first sergeant was at his desk, a giant, powerful, sadistic-looking man with dark skin the same color as that of his old buddy Tembo. He held a plastic doll dressed in a captain’s uniform in one hand, and was pushing straightened-out paper clips into it with the other. Without turning his head he roiled his eyes toward Bill and scowled.
“You’re in bad trouble, trooper, coming into the orderly room out of uniform like that.”
“I’m in worse trouble than you think, Sarge,” Bill said leaning weakly on the desk. The sergeant stared at Bill’s mismatched hands, his eyes flickering back and forth quickly from one to the other.
“Where did you get that hand, trooper? Speak up! I know that hand.”
“It belonged to a buddy of mine, and I have the arm that goes with it too.”
Anxious to get onto any subject other than his military crimes, Bill held the hand out for the sergeant to look at. But he was horrified when the fingers tensed into a rockhard fist, the muscles bunched on his arm and the fist flew forward to catch the first sergeant square on the jaw and knocked him backward off his chair ass over applecart. “Sergeant!” Bill screamed, and grabbed the rebellious hand with his other and forced it, not without a struggle, back to his side.
The sergeant rose slowly, and Bill backed away, shuddering. He could not believe it when the sergeant reseated himself and Bill saw that he saw smiling.
“Thought I knew that hand, belongs to my old buddy Tembo. We always joked like that. You take good care of that arm, you hear? Is there any more of Tembo around?” and when Bill said no, he knocked out a quick tom-tom beat on the edge of the desk. “Well, he’s gone to the Big Ju-ju Rite in the Sky.” The smile vanished and the snarl reappeared. “You’re in bad trouble, trooper. Let’s see your ID card.”
He whipped it from Bill’s nerveless fingers and shoved it into a slot in the desk. Lights flickered, the mechanism hummed and vibrated and a screen lit up. The first sergeant read the message there, and as he did the snarl faded from his face and was replaced by an expression of cold anger. When he turned back to Bill his eyes were narrowed slits that pinned him with a gaze that could curdle milk in an instant or destroy minor life forms like rodents or cockroaches. It chilled Bill’s blood in his veins and sent a shiver through his body that made it sway like a tree in the wind.