“No, of, course not, how foolish of me. Thanks for jerking me back into line, Bill, -you’ll make a good trooper. All I expect is criminal indifference which I can take advantage of by working through the Old Boys Network, bribery, cutting false orders, black-marketing, and the other usual things. It’s just that I had been doing a good job on you slobs in Camp Leon Trotsky, and the l east I expected was to be left alone to keep doing it, which was pretty damn stupid of me. I had better get cracking on my transfer now.” He slid to his feet and stowed the candy and gold-rimmed glasses away in a locked footlocker.
Bill, who in moments of shock found it hard to adjust instantly, was still bobbing his head and occasionally banging it with the heel of his hand. “Lucky thing,” he said, “for your chosen career that you were born deformed-I mean you have such nice teeth.”
“Luck nothing,” Deathwish said, plunking one of his projecting tusks, “expensive as hell. Do you know what a genemutated, vat-grown, surgically-implanted set of two-inch tusks cost? I bet you don’t know! I worked the summer vac for three years to earn enough to buy these-but I tell you they were worth it. The image, that’s everything. I studied the old tapes of prehistoric spirit-breakers, and in their own crude way they were good. Selected by physical type and low I.Q. of course, but they knew their roles. Bulletheads, shaved clean, with scars, thick jaws, repulsive manners, hot pants, everything. I figured a small investment in the beginning would pay rich dividends in the end. And it was a sacrifice, believe me, you won’t see many implanted tusks around! For a lot of reasons. Oh, maybe they are good for eating tough meat, but what the hell else? Wait until you try kissing your first girl … Now, get lost, Bill, I got things to do. See you around …”
His last words faded in the distance, since Bill’s well-conditioned reflexes had carried him down the corridor the instant he had been dismissed. When the spontaneous terror faded, he began to walk with a crafty roll, like a duck with a sprung kneecap, that he thought looked like an old spacesailor’s gait. He was beginning to feel a seasoned hand and momentarily labored under the delusion that he knew more about the troopers than they knew about him. This pathetic misconception was dispelled instantly by the speakers on the ceiling, which belched and then grated their nasal voices throughout the ship.
“Now hear this, the orders direct from the Old Man himself, Captain Zekial, that you all have been waiting to hear. We’re heading into action, so we are going to have a clean buckle-down fore and aft, stow all loose gear.”
A low, heartfelt groan of pain echoed from every compartment of the immense ship.
VI
There was plenty of latrine rumor and scuttlebutt about this first flight of the Chris Keeler, but none of it was true. The rumors were planted by undercover MPs and were valueless. About the only thing they could be sure of was that they might be going someplace because they seemed to be getting ready to go someplace. Even Tembo admitted to that as they lashed down fuses in the storeroom.
“Then again,” he added, “we might be doing all this just to fool any spies into thinking we are going someplace, when really some other ships are going there.”
“Where?” Bill asked irritably, tying his forefinger into a knot and removing part of the nail when he pulled it free.
“Why anyplace at all, it doesn’t matter.” Tembo was undisturbed by anything that did not bear on his faith. “But I do know where you are going, Bill.”
“Where?” Eagerly. A perennial sucker for a rumor.
“Straight to hell unless you are saved.”
“Not again …” Bill pleaded.
“Look there,” Tembo said temptingly, and projected a heavenly scene with golden gates, clouds, and a soft tom-tom beat in the background.
“Knock off that salvation-crap!” First Class Spleen shouted, and the scene vanished.
Something tugged slightly at Bill’s stomach, but he ignored it as being just another of the symptoms sent up continually by his panic-stricken gut, which thought it was starving to death and hadn’t yet realized that all its marvelous grinding and dissolving machinery had been condemned to a liquid diet. But Tembo stopped work and cocked his head to one side, then poked himself experimentally in the stomach.