I asked one of the doctors what percentage of the victims flunked the physical. He looked startled. “Why, we never fail anyone. The law doesn’t permit us to.”
“Huh? I mean, Excuse me, Doctor? Then what’s the point of this goose-flesh parade?”
“Why, the purpose is,” he answered, hauling off and hitting me in the knee with a hammer (I kicked him, but not hard), “to find out what duties you are physically able to perform. But if you came in here in a wheel chair and blind in both eyes and were silly enough to insist on enrolling, they would find something silly enough to match. Counting the fuzz on a caterpillar by touch, maybe. The only way you can fail is by having the psychiatrists decide that you are not able to understand the oath.”
“Oh. UhDoctor, were you already a doctor when you joined up? Or did they decide you ought to be a doctor and send you to school?”
“Me?” He seemed shocked. “Youngster, do I look that silly? I’m a civilian employee.”
“Oh. Sorry, sir.”
“No offense. But military service is for ants. Believe me. I see ‘em go, I see ‘em come back — when they do come back. I see what it’s done to them. And for what? A purely nominal political privilege that pays not one centavo and that most of them aren’t competent to use wisely anyhow. Now if they would let medical men run things — but never mind that; you might think I was talking treason, free speech or not. But, youngster, if you’ve got savvy enough to count ten, you’ll back out while you still can. Here, take these papers back to the recruiting sergeant — and remember what I said.”
I went back to the rotunda. Carl was already there. The Fleet Sergeant looked over my papers and said glumly, “Apparently you both are almost insufferably healthy-except for holes in the head. One moment, while I get some witnesses.” He punched a button and two female clerks came out, one old battle-ax, one kind of cute.
He pointed to our physical examination forms, our birth certificates, and our I. D.’s said formally: “I invite and require you, each and severally, to examine these exhibits, determine what they are and to determine, each independently, what relation, if any, each document bears to these two men standing here in your presence.”
They treated it as a dull routine, which I’m sure it was; nevertheless they scrutinized every document, they took our fingerprints — again! — and the cute one put a jeweler’s loupe in her eye and compared prints from birth to now. She did the same with signatures. I began to doubt if I was myself.
The Fleet Sergeant added, “Did you find exhibits relating to their present competence to take the oath of enrollment? If so, what?”
“We found,” the older one said, “appended to each record off physical examination a duly certified conclusion by an authorized and delegated board of psychiatrists stating that each of them is mentally competent to take the oath and that neither one is under the influence of alcohol, narcotics, other disabling drugs, nor of hypnosis.”
“Very good.” He turned to us, “Repeat after me — “
“I, being of legal age, of my own free will — “
“ ‘I,’ “ we each echoed, “ ‘being of legal age, of my own free will — ‘ “
“ — without coercion, promise, or inducement of any sort, after having been duly advised and warned of the meaning and consequences of this oath — “
“ — do now enroll in the Federal Service of the Terran Federation for a term of not less than two years and as much longer as may be required by the needs of the Service — “
(I gulped a little over that part. I had always thought of a “term” as two years, even though I knew better, because that’s the way people talk about it. Why, we were signing up for life.)
“I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the Federation against all its enemies on or off Terra, to protect and defend the Constitutional liberties and privileges of all citizens and lawful residents of the Federation, its associated states and territories, to perform, on or off Terra, such duties of any lawful nature as may be assigned to me by lawful direct or delegated authority — “