The antennas of the enlisted men responded instantly, straightened the men’s backs, locked their joints, hauled in their guts, tucked in their butts — made their minds go blank. Unk sprang up from the floor, stood stiff and shivering.
Only one man was slow about coming to attention. That man was Boaz. And when he did come to attention, there was something insolent and loose and leering about the way he did it.
Captain Burch, finding Boaz’s attitude profoundly offensive, was about to speak to Boaz about it. But the Captain no sooner got his mouth open than pain hit him between the eyes.
The captain closed his mouth without having made a sound.
Under the baleful gaze of Boaz, he came smartly to attention, did an about-face, heard a snare drum in his head, and marched out of the barrack in step with the drum.
When the captain was gone, Boaz did not put his squadmates at ease again, though it was in his power to do so. He had a small control box in his right front trouser pocket that could make his squadmates do just about anything. The box was the size of a one-pint hip flask. Like a hip flask, the box was curved to fit a body curve. Boaz chose to carry it on the hard, curved face of his thigh.
The control box had six buttons and four knobs on it. By manipulating these, Boaz could control anybody who had an antenna in his skull. Boaz could administer pain in any amount to that anybody — could bring him to attention, could make him hear a snare drum, could make him march, halt, fall in, fall out, safute, attack, retreat, hop, skip, jump . . .
Boaz had no antenna in his own skull.
As free as it wanted to be — that’s how free the free will of Boaz was.
Boaz was one of the real commanders of the Army of Mars. He was in command of one-tenth of the force that was to attack the United States of America when the attack, on Earth was mounted. Down the line were units training to attack Russia, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Mexico, China, Nepal, Uruguay. . .
To the best of Boaz’s knowledge, there were eight hundred real commanders of the Army of Mars — not one of them with an apparent rank above buck sergeant. The nominal commander of the entire Army, General of the Armies Borders M. Pulsifer, was in fact controlled at all times by his orderly, Corporal Bert Wright. Corporal Wright, the perfect orderly, carried aspirin for the General’s almost chronic headaches.
The advantages of a system of secret commanders are obvious. Any rebellion within the Army of Mars would be directed against the wrong people. And, in time of war, the enemy could exterminate the entire Martian officer class without disturbing the Army of Mars in the least.
“Seven hundred and ninety-nine,” said Boaz out loud, correcting his own understanding of the number of real commanders. One of the real commanders was dead, having been strangled at the stake by Unk. The strangled man had been Private Stony Stevenson, f ormer real commander of a British attack unit. Stony had become so fascinated by Unk’s struggles to understand what was going on that he had begun, unconsciously, to help Unk think.
Stevenson had suffered the ultimate humiliation for this. An antenna had been installed in his skull, and he had been forced by it to march to the stake like a good soldier — there to await murder by his protégé.
Boaz let his squadmates go on standing at attention — let them go on quivering, thinking nothing, seeing nothing. Boaz went to Unk’s cot, lay down on it with his big, lustrous shoes on the brown blanket. He folded his hands behind his head — arched his body like a bow.
“Awwwww — ” said Boaz, somewhere between a yawn and a groan. “Awwwww — now, men, men, men,” he said, letting his mind idle. “God damn, now, men,” he said. It was lazy, nonsense talk. Boaz was a little bored with his toys. It occurred to him to have them fight each other — but the penalty for doing that, if he got caught, was the same penalty Stony Stevenson had paid.