Boaz chuckled and cooed again, and then he decided that his fortunate position in life would look a lot better if he treated it seriously – showed what a load it was, showed how honored he felt to have a load like that. He reared back judiciously, hooked his thumbs under his belt and scowled. “Oh,” he said, “it ain’t all play by any means.” He sauntered over to Unk, stood inches away from him, looked him up and down. “Unk, boy – ” he said, “I’d hate to tell you how much time I’ve spent thinking about you – worrying about you, Unk.”
Boaz rocked on his feet. “You will try an’ puzzle things out, won’t you! You know how many times they had you in the hospital, trying to clean out that memory of yours? Seven times, Unk! You know how many times they usually have to send a man to have his memory cleaned out? Once, Unk. One time!” Boaz snapped his finger under Unk’s nose. “And that does it, Unk. One time, and the man never bothers hisself about anything ever after.” He shook his head wonderingly. “Not you, though, Unk.”
Unk shuddered.
“I keeping you at attention too long, Unk?” said Boaz. He gritted his teeth. He couldn’t forbear torturing Unk from time to time.
For one thing, Unk had had everything back on Earth, and Boaz had had nothing.
For another thing, Boaz was wretchedly dependent on Unk – or would be when they hit Earth. Boaz was an orphan who had been recruited when he was only fourteen – and he didn’t have the haziest notion as to how to have a good time on Earth.
He was counting on Unk to show him how.
“You want to know who you are – where you come from – what you were?” said Boaz to Unk. Unk was still at attention, thinking nothing, unable to profit from whatever Boaz might tell him. Boaz wasn’t talking for
Unk’s benefit anyway. Boaz was reassuring himself about the buddy who was going to be by his side when they hit Earth.
“Man – ” said Boaz, scowling at Unk, “you are one of the luckiest men ever lived. Back there on Earth, man, you were King!”
Like most pieces of information on Mars, Boaz’s pieces of information about Unk were underdeveloped. He could not say from where, exactly, the pieces had come. He had picked them out of the general background noises of army life.
And he was too good a soldier to go around asking questions, trying to round out his knowledge.
A soldier’s knowledge wasn’t supposed to be round. So that Boaz didn’t really know anything about Unk except that he had been very lucky once. He embroidered on this.
“I mean – ” said Boaz, “there wasn’t anything you couldn’t have, wasn’t anything you couldn’t do, wasn’t no place you couldn’t go!”
And while Boaz stressed the marvel of Unk’s good luck on Earth, he was expressing a deep concern for another marvel – his superstitious conviction that his own luck on Earth was sure to be rotten.
Boaz now used three magical words that seemed to describe the maximum happiness a person could achieve on Earth: Hollywood night clubs. He had never seen Hollywood, had never seen a night club. “Man,” he said, “you were in and out of Hollywood night clubs all day and all night long.
“Man,” said Boaz to uncomprehending Unk, “you had everything a man needs to really lead hisself a life on Earth, and you knowed how to do it, too.
“Man,” said Boaz to Unk, trying to conceal the pathetic formlessness of his aspirations. “We’re going to go into some fine places and order us up some fine things, and circulate and carry on, with some fine people, and just generally have us a good whoop-dee-doo.” He seized Unk’s arm, rocked him. “Buddies – that’s us, buddy. Boy – we’re going to be a famous pair – going everywhere, doing everything.
“‘Here comes lucky old Unk and his buddy Boaz!’” said Boaz, saying what he hoped Earthlings would be saying after the conquest. “‘And there they go, happy as two birds!’” He chuckled and cooed about the happy, birdlike pair.
His smile withered.
His smiles never lasted very long. Somewhere deep inside Boaz was worried sick. He was worried sick about losing his job. It had never been clear to him how he had landed the job – the great privilege. He didn’t even know who had given him the swell job.
Boaz didn’t even know who was in command of the real commanders.
He had never received an order – not from anyone who was superior to the real commanders. Boaz based his actions, as did all the real commanders, on what could be best described as conversational tidbits – tidbits circulated on the real-commander level.
Whenever the real commanders got together late at night, the tidbits were passed around with the beer and the crackers and cheese.
There would be a tidbit, for instance, about waste in the supply rooms, and another about the desirability of soldiers’ actually getting hurt and mad during jujitsu training, another about soldiers’ shabby tendency to skip loops in lacing up their puttees. Boaz himself would pass these on, without any idea as to their point of origin – and he would base his actions on them.
The execution of Stony Stevenson by Unk had also been announced in this way. Suddenly, it had been the topic of conversation.
Suddenly, the real commanders had placed Stony under arrest.
Boaz now fingered the control box in his pocket, without actually touching a control. He took his place among the men he controlled, came to attention voluntarily, pressed a button, and relaxed as his squadmates relaxed.
He wanted a drink of hard liquor very much. And be was entitled to liquor, too, whenever he wanted it. Unlimited supplies of all kinds of liquor were flown in from Earth regularly for the real commanders. And the officers could have all the liquor they wanted, too, though they couldn’t get the good stuff. What the officers drank was a lethal green liquor made locally out of fermented lichens.
But Boaz never drank. One reason he didn’t drink was that he was afraid that alcohol would impair his efficiency as a soldier. Another reason he didn’t drink was that he was afraid that he would forget himself and offer an enlisted man a drink.
The penalty for a real commander who offered an enlisted man an alcoholic beverage was death.
“Yes, Lord,” said Boaz, adding his voice to the hubbub of the relaxing men.
Ten minutes later, Sergeant Brackman declared a recreation period, during which everyone was supposed to go out and play German batball, the chief sport of the Army of Mars.
Unk stole away.
Unk stole away to barrack 12 to look for the letter under the blue rock – the letter that his red-headed victim had told him about.
The barracks in the area were empty.
The banner at the head of the mast before them was thin air.
The empty barracks had been the home of a battalion of Martian Imperial Commandos. The Commandos had disappeared quietly in the dead of night a month before. They had taken off in their space ships, their faces blackened, their dog tags taped so as not to clink – their destination secret.
The Martian Imperial Commandos were experts at killing sentries with loops of piano wire.
Their secret destination was the Earthling moon. They were going to start the war there.
Unk found a big blue stone outside the furnace room of barrack twelve. The stone was a turquoise. Turquoises are very common on Mars. The turquoise Unk found was a flagstone a foot across.
Unk looked under it. He found an aluminum cylinder with a screw cap. Inside the cylinder was a very long letter written in pencil.
Unk did not know who had written it. He was in poor shape for guessing, since he knew the names of only three people – Sergeant Brackman, Boaz, and Unk.
Unk went into the furnace room and closed the door. He was excited, though he didn’t know why. He began to read by the light from the dusty window. Dear Unk: – the letter began.
Dear Unk: – the letter began: They aren’t much, God knows – but here are the things I know for sure, and at. the end you will find a list of questions you should do your best to find answers to. The questions are important. I have thought harder about them than I have about the answers I already have. That is the first thing I know for sure: (1.) If the questions don’t make sense, neither will the answers.
All the things that the writer knew for sure were numbered, as though to emphasize the painful, stepby-step nature of the game of finding things out for sure. There were one hundred and fifty-eight things the writer knew for sure. There had once been one hundred and eighty-five, but seventeen had been crossed off.