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.
chapter five
LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN HERO
“We can make the center of a man’s memory virtually as sterile as a scalpel fresh from the autoclave. But grains of new experience begin to accumulate on it at once. These grains in turn form themselves into patterns not necessarily favorable to military thinking. Unfortunately, this problem of recontamination seems insoluble.”
— DR. MORRIS N. CASTLE,
Director of Mental Health, Mars
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.