Such a period had been reached now. The class had just been dosed with goofballs. Now the students had to sit quietly on the benches and listen to music and wait for the goofballs to reach their small intestines.
The tune being played had been pirated recently from an Earthling broadcast. It was a big hit on Earth – a trio composed for a boy, a girl, and cathedral bells. It was called “God Is Our Interior Decorator.” The boy and girl sang alternate lines of the verses, and joined in close harmony on the choruses.
The cathedral bells whanged and clanged whenever anything of a religious nature was mentioned.
There were seventeen recruits. They were all in their newly issued lichen-green undershorts. The purpose of having them strip was to permit the instructress to see at a glance their external bodily reactions to Schliemann breathing.
The recruits were fresh from amnesia treatments and antenna installations at the Reception Center Hospital. Their hair had been shaved off, and each recruit had a strip of adhesive plaster running from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck.
The adhesive plaster showed where the antenna had been put in.
The recruits’ eyes were as empty as the windows of abandoned textile mills.
So were the eyes of the instructress, since she, too, had recently had her memory cleaned out.
When they released her from the hospital, they told her what her name was, and where she lived, and how to teach Schliemann breathing – and that was about all the factual information they gave her. There was one other item: they told her she had an eight-year-old son named Chrono, and that she could visit him at his school on Tuesday evenings, if she liked.
The name of the instructress, of Chrono’s mother, of Unk’s mate, was Bee. She wore a lichen-green sweatsuit, white gym shoes, and, around her neck, a whistle on a chain and a stethoscope.
There was a rebus of her name on her sweatshirt.
She looked at the clock on the wall. Enough time had passed for the slowest digestive system to carry a goofball to the small intestine. She stood, turned off the tape recorder, and blew her whistle.
“Fall in!” she said.
The recruits had not yet had basic military training, so they were incapable of falling in with precision. Painted on the floor were squares within which the recruits were to stand in order to form ranks and files pleasing to the eye. A game resembling musical chairs was now played, with several empty-eyed recruits scuffling for the same square. In time, each found a square of his own.
“All right,” said Bee, “take your plugs and plug up your noses and ears, please.”
The recruits had been carrying the plugs in their clammy fists. They plugged their noses and ears.
Bee now went from recruit to recruit, making certain that all ears and nostrils were sealed.
“All right,” she said, when her inspection was done. “Very good,” she said. She took from the table the roll of adhesive plaster. “Now I am going to prove to you that you don’t need to use your lungs at all, as long as you have Combat Respiratory Rations – or, as you’ll soon be calling them in the Army, goofballs.” She moved through the ranks, snipping off lengths of adhesive, sealing mouths with them. No one objected. When she got through, no one had a suitable aperture through which to issue an objection.
She noted the time, and again turned on the music. For the next twenty minutes there would be nothing to do but watch the bare bodies for color changes, for the dying spasms in the sealed and useless lungs. Ideally, the bodies would turn blue, then red, then natural again within the twenty minutes – and the rib cages would quake violently, give up, be still.
When the twenty-minute ordeal was over, every recruit would know how unnecessary lung-breathing was. Ideally, every recruit would be so confident in himself and goofballs, when his course of instruction was over, that he would be ready to spring out of a space ship on the Earthling moon or on the bottom of an Earthling ocean or anywhere, without wondering for a split second what he might be springing into.
Bee sat on a bench.
There were dark circles around her fine eyes. The circles had come after she left the hospital, and they had grown more somber with each passing day. At the hospital, they had promised her that she would become more serene and efficient with each passing day. And they had told her that, if through some fluke she should not find this to be the case, she was to report back to the hospital for more help.
“We all need help from time to time,” Dr. Morris N. Castle had said. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Some day I may need your help, Bee, and I won’t hesitate to ask for it.”
She had been sent to the hospital after showing her supervisor this sonnet, which she had written about Schliemann breathing:
Break every link with air and mist,
Seal every open vent;
Make throat as tight as miser’s fist,
Keep life within you pent.
Breathe out, breathe in, no more, no more,
For breathing’s for the meek;
And when in deathly space we soar,
Be careful not to speak.
If you with grief or joy are rapt,
Just signal with a tear;
To soul and heart within you trapped
Add speech and atmosphere.
Every man’s an island as in
lifeless space we roam.
Yes, every man’s an island:
island fortress, island home.
Bee, who had been sent to the hospital for writing this poem, had a strong face – high cheekboned and haughty. She looked strikingly like an Indian brave. But whoever said so was under an obligation to add quickly that she was, all the same, quite beautiful.
Now there was a sharp knock on Bee’s door. Bee went to the door and opened it. “Yes?” she said.
In the deserted corridor stood a red and sweating man in uniform. The uniform had no insignia. Slung on the man’s back was a rifle. His eyes were deep-set and furtive. “Messenger,” he said gruffly. “Message for Bee.”
“I’m Bee,” said Bee uneasily.
The messenger looked her up and down, made her feel naked. His body threw off heat, and the heat enveloped her suffocatingly.
“Do you recognize me?” he whispered.
“No,” she said. His question relieved her a little. Apparently she had done business with him before. He and his visit, then, were routine – and, in the hospital, she had simply forgotten the man and his routine.
“I don’t remember you, either,” he whispered.
“I’ve been in the hospital,” she said. “I had to have my memory cleaned.”
“Whisper!” he said sharply.
“What?” said Bee.
“Whisper!” he said.
“Sorry,” she whispered. Apparently whispering was part of the routine for dealing with this particular functionary. “I’ve forgotten so much.”
“We all have!” he whispered angrily. He again looked up and down the corridor. “You are the mother of Chrono, aren’t you?” be whispered.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Now the strange messenger concentrated his gaze on her face. He breathed deeply, sighed, frowned – blinked frequently.
“What – what’s the message?” whispered Bee, “The message is this,” whispered the messenger. “I am the father of Chrono. I have just deserted from the Army. My name is Unk. I am going to find some way for you, me, the boy, and my best friend to escape from here. I don’t know how yet, but you’ve got to be ready to go at a moment’s notice!” He gave her a hand grenade. “Hide this somewhere,” he whispered. “When the time comes, you may need it.”
Excited shouts came from the reception room at the far end of the corridor.
“He said he was a confidential messenger!” shouted a man.
“In a pig’s eye he’s a messenger!” shouted another. “He’s a deserter in time of war! Who’d he come to see?”
“He didn’t say. He said it was top secret!”
A whistle shrilled.
“Six of you come with me!” shouted a man. “We’ll search this place room by room. The rest of you surround the outside!”
Unk shoved Bee and her hand grenade into the room, shut the door. He unslung his rifle, leveled it at the plugged and taped recruits. “One peep, one funny move out of any of you guys,” he said, “and you’ll all be dead.”
The recruits, standing rigidly on their assigned squares on the floor, did not respond in any way.
They were pale blue.
Their rib cages were quaking.
The whole awareness of each man was concentrated in the region of a small, white, life-giving pill dissolving in the duodenum.
“Where can I hide?” said Unk. “How can I get out?” It was unnecessary for Bee to reply. There was no place to hide. There was no way out save through the door to the corridor.