The stake was nineteen feet, six and five thirty-seconds inches high, not counting the twelve feet, two and one-eighth inches of it embedded in the iron. The stake had a mean diameter of two feet, five and eleven third-seconds inches, varying from this mean, however, by as much as seven and one thirty-second inches. The stake was composed of quartz, alkali, feldspar, mica, and traces of tourmaline and hornblende. For the information of the man at the stake: He was one hundred and forty-two million, three hundred and forty-six thousand, nine hundred and eleven miles from the Sun, and help was not on its way.
The red-haired man at the stake made no sound, because soldiers at ease were not permitted to make sounds. He sent a message with his eyes, however, to the effect that he would like to scream. He sent the message to anyone whose eyes would meet his. He was hoping to get the message to one person in particular, to his best friend – to Unk. He was looking for Unk.
He couldn’t find Unk’s face.
If he had found Unk’s face, there wouldn’t have been any blooming of recognition and pity on Unk’s face. Unk had just come out of the base hospital, where he had been treated for mental illness, and Unk’s mind was almost a blank. Unk didn’t recognize his best friend at the stake. Unk didn’t recognize anybody. Unk wouldn’t have even known his own name was Unk, wouldn’t even have known he was a soldier, if they hadn’t told him so when they discharged him from the hospital.
He had gone straight from the hospital to the formation he was in now.
At the hospital they told him again and again and again that he was the best soldier in the best squad in the best platoon in the best company in the best battalion in the best regiment in the best division in the best army.
Unk guessed that was something to be proud of.
At the hospital they told him he had been a pretty sick boy, but he was fully recovered now.
That seemed like good news.
At the hospital they told him what his sergeant’s name was, and what a sergeant was, and what all the symbols of ranks and grades and specialties were.
They had blanked out so much of Unk’s memory that they even had to teach him the foot movements and the manual of arms all over again.
At the hospital they even had to explain to Unk what Combat Respiratory Rations or CRR’s or goofballs were – had to tell him to take one every six hours or suffocate. These were oxygen pills that made up for the fact that there wasn’t any oxygen in the Martian atmosphere.
At the hospital they even had to explain to Unk that there was a radio antenna under the crown of his skull, and that it would hurt him whenever he did something a good soldier wouldn’t ever do. The antenna also would give him orders and furnish drum music to march to. They said that not just Unk but everybody had an antenna like that – doctors and nurses and four-star generals included. It was a very democratic army, they said.
Unk guessed that was a good way for an army to be. At the hospital they gave Unk a small sample of the pain his antenna would stick him with if he ever did anything wrong.
The pain was horrible.
Unk was bound to admit that a soldier would be crazy not to do his duty at all times.
At the hospital they had said the most important rule of all was this one: Always obey a direct order without a moment’s hesitation.
Standing there in formation on the iron parade ground, Unk realized that he had a lot to relearn. At the hospital they hadn’t taught him everything there was to know about living.
The antenna in his head brought him to attention again and his mind went blank. Then the antenna put Unk at parade rest again, then at attention again, then made him give a rifle salute, then put him at ease again.
His thinking began again. He caught another glimpse of the world around him.
Life was like that, Unk told himself tentatively – blanks and glimpses, and now and then maybe that awful flash of pain for doing something wrong.
A small, low-flying, fast-flying moon sailed in the violet sky overhead. Unk didn’t know why he thought so, but he thought the moon was moving too fast. It didn’t seem right. And the sky, he thought, should be blue instead of violet.
Unk felt cold, too, and he longed for more warmth. The unending cold seemed as wrong, as unfair, somehow, as the fast moon and the violet sky.
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.