The second item was, (2.) I am a thing called alive.
The third was, (3.) I am in a place called Mars.
The fourth was, (4.) I am in a part of a thing called an army.
The fifth was, (5.) The army plans to kill other things called alive in a place called Earth.
Of the first eighty-one items, not one was crossed out. And, in the first eight .one items, the writer progressed to subtler and subtler matters, and mistakes grew more numerous.
Boaz was explained and dismissed by the writer very early in the game.
(46.) Watch out for Boaz, Unk. He is not what he seems.
(47.) Boaz has something in his right-hand pocket that hurts people in the head when they do something Boaz doesn’t like.
(48.) Some other people have things that can hurt you in the head, too. You can’t tell by looking who has one, so be sweet to everybody.
(71.) Unk, old friend – almost everything I know for sure has come from fighting the pain from my antenna, said the letter to Unk. Whenever I start to turn my head and look at something, and the pain comes, I keep turning my head anyway, because I know I am going to see something I’m not supposed to see. Whenever I ask a question, and the pain comes, I know I have asked a really good question. Then I break the question into little pieces, and I ask the pieces of the questions. Then I get answers to the pieces, and then I put the answers all together and get an answer to the big question.
(72.) The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn. You are afraid of the pain now, Unk, but you won’t learn anything if you don’t invite the pain. And the more you learn, the gladder you will be to stand the pain.
There in the furnace room of the empty barrack, Unk laid the letter aside for a moment. He felt like crying, for the heroic writer’s faith in Unk was misplaced. Unk knew he couldn’t stand a fraction of the pain the writer had stood – couldn’t possibly love knowledge that much.
Even the little sample twinge they had given him in the hospital had been excruciating. He gulped air now, like a fish dying on a riverbank, remembering the big pain Boaz had slammed him with in the barrack. He would rather die than risk another pain like that.
His eyes watered.
If he had tried to speak, he would have sobbed.
Poor Unk didn’t want any trouble from anybody ever again. Whatever information he gained from the letter – information gained by another man’s heroism – he would use to avoid any more pain.
Unk wondered if there were people who could stand more pain than others. He supposed this was the case. He supposed tearfully that he was especially sensitive in this regard. Without wishing the writer any harm, Unk wished the writer could feel, just once, the pains as Unk felt them.
Then maybe the writer would address his letters to someone else.
Unk had no way of judging the quality of the information contained in the letter. He accepted it all hungrily, uncritically. And, in accepting it, Unk gained an understanding of life that was identical with the writer’s understanding of life. Unk wolfed down a philosophy.
And mixed in with the philosophy were gossip, history, astronomy, biology, theology, geography, psychology, medicine – and even a short story.
Some random examples:
Gossip:(22.) General Borders is drunk all the time, He is so drunk he can’t even tie his shoelaces so they will stay tied. Officers are as mixed up and unhappy as anybody. You used to be one, Unk, with a battalion all your own.
History:(26.) Everybody on Mars came from Earth. They thought they would be better off on Mars. Nobody can remember what was so bad about Earth.
Astronomy:(11.) Everything in the whole sky revolves around Mars once a day.
Biology:(58.) New people come out of women when men and women sleep together. New people hardly ever come out of women on Mars because the men and the women sleep in different places.
Theology:(15.) Somebody made everything for some reason.
Geography:(16.) Mars is round. The only city on it is called Phoebe. Nobody knows why it is called Phoebe.
Psychology:(103.) Unk, the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.
Medicine:(73.) When they clean out a man’s memory on this place called Mars, they don’t really clean it completely. They lust clean out the middle of it, sort of. They always leave a lot of stuff in the corners. There is a story around about how they tried cleaning out a few memories completely. The poor people who had that done to them couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything. The only thing anybody could think of to do with them was to housebreak them, teach them a basic vocabulary of a thousand words, and give them jobs in military or industrial public relations.
The short story: (89.) Unk, your best friend is Stony Stevenson. Stony is a big, happy, strong man, and he drinks a quart of whisky a day. Stony doesn’t have an antenna in his head, and he can remember everything that ever happened to him. He pretends to be an intelligence scout, but he is one of the real commanders. He radio-controls a company of assault infantrymen who are going to attack a place on Earth called England. Stony is from England. Stony likes the Army of Mars because there is so much to laugh about. Stony laughs all the time. He heard what an eightball you were, Unk, so he came over to your barrack to have a look at you. He pretended he was a friend of yours, so he could hear you talk. After a while, you got to trust him, Unk, and you told him some of your secret theories about what life on Mars was all about. Stony tried to laugh, but then he realized that you had turned up some things that he didn’t know anything about. He couldn’t get over it, because he was supposed to know everything, and you weren’t supposed to know anything. And then you told Stony a lot of the big questions you wanted answered, and Stony knew the answers to only about half of them. And Stony went back to his barrack, and the questions he didn’t know the answers to kept going around and around in his head. He couldn’t sleep that night, even though he drank and drank and drank. He was catching on that somebody was using him, and he didn’t have any idea who it was. He didn’t even know why there had to be an Army of Mars in the first place. He didn’t even know why Mars was going to attack Earth. And the more he remembered about Earth, the more he realized that the Army of Mars didn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell. The big attack on Earth would be suicide for sure. Stony wondered who he could talk to about this, and there just wasn’t anybody but you, Unk. So Stony staggered out of bed about an hour before sunrise, and he sneaked in your barrack, Unk, and he woke you up. He told you everything about Mars he knew. And he said that from now on he would tell you every bloody thing he found out, and you were supposed to tell him every bloody thing you found out. And every so often you two would get off somewhere and try to fit things together. And he gave you a bottle of whisky. And you both drank from it, and Stony said you were his best bloody friend. He said you, were the only bloody friend he had ever had on Mars, even though he laughed all the time, and he cried, and almost woke up people around your bunk. He told you to watch out for Boaz, and then he went back to his barrack and slept like a baby.
The letter, from the point of the short story on, was proof of the effectiveness of the secret observation team of Stony Stevenson and Unk. From that point on, the things known for sure in the letter were almost all introduced by phrases like: Stony says – and You found out – and Stony told you – and You told Stony – and You and Stony got roaring drunk out on the rifle range one night, and you two crazy bums decided –
The most important thing that the two crazy bums decided was that the man who was in actual command of everything on Mars was a big, genial, smiling, yodeling man who always had a big dog with him. This man and his dog, according to the letter to Unk, appeared at secret meetings of the real commanders of the Army of Mars about once every hundred days.