Naked to the Stars Read online

Forty-eight minutes later they took off, and eighty-three minutes after that they sat down at the field attached to Fort Norman Cota, Missouri. There cadre Section Leaders and Squadmen were waiting for them and ran the whole contingent the full distance back to the Combat Engineers Training Center on the Fort’s west side, some four miles away.

  It was a soft May day in the Ozarks. A puff of cloud here and there in the sky showed above the straight shafts of the poplar and pine and reflected in the puddles they splashed through;puddles scattered here and there in the reddish mud and suddenly blue and pure as fragments of tinted glass. The air smelled warm and heavy and sweet. About him, Cal could hear the grunts and gasps of his fellow-trainees, as they puffed against the prolonged heavy work of the run. Cal was breathing deeply and steadily himself, and it occurred to him suddenly that after these past months of hospital and bumming around he was in no better shape than a lot of them. What made the run more bearable to him was his attitude. He saved his breath for running; his emotions for things over which he had no control. The thought of this made him feel a sudden satisfaction with his decision to stay isolated, neutral and apart.

  “Close up! Close up!” yelled the cadre men, running along-side the stumbling, winded column of men laden with folder-files and dufflebags. “Keep it in line, butterbellies! Shag it!”

  Their voices struck off a faint echo in Cal’s memory of his own first days in the Service. The wild sweats and alarms mixed with the tremendous excitement of being caught up in something big and vital. It had been hell—but he had been alive. Or so he had told himself all these years. He pushed the tag-end of uncertainty away from him, telling himself that now, for a while,he could be alive again. For a moment, he achieved what he sought: the slow, sweet twinge of a nostalgia lingered for a second in him.

  They were passing the barracks area of some trainees already in the second half of Basic. Tanned a full shade darker than the men of this contingent, they were having a scrub-up of their barracks area. Shouts of “You’ll be sorreee!” and “Tell’m where to send the body!” floated after them. For some reason, this touched off a slight uncomfortableness in Cal; a touch of shame which punctured his nostalgic mood. He settled down to hisrunning and not thinking.

  About a third of the contingent finally pulled up—having made the complete run without falling behind—gasping and heaving like broken-winded horses in front of the white-painted two-story barrack buildings of the training area.

  A sharp-faced man of Cal’s age, with the diamond of a Wing Section showing on the tabs of his sharply creased and tailored fatigues, came out of a small Unit Office building and stood on the top of its three steps, looking down at them.

  “You shouldn’t ought to bring them in before lunch,” he told the Cadre Section in charge. “These muck-faces always make me sick to my stomach.” Suddenly he roared. “Atten-SHUN! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you stand at attention?”

  “Of course not!” said the Charge Section. “They’re a bunch from that Denver Recruitment Center.”

  “Well, keep the suck-apples out of my way,” said the Wing Section. “Or I’ll send them all off on a run around the mountain. Show them their barracks. And see they don’t get them dirty.”

  Silent, detached, Cal saw the men around him introduced to the white-painted buildings, and felt the wave of their exhausted relief at the sight of the mathematically perfect twin rows of bunks on each floor. He watched their feelings change to exasperation as they were put to making up their assigned bunks,storing their bag and files in foot lockers and bunk hooks. And then exasperation turned to silent fury as they were directed to remove their shoes and outer clothing and carefully scrub and wipe every trace of dirt, dust or disarray their incoming had produced. Finally, he saw it all give way to numb shock as they were told to take their ponchos and mess kits out into the open between the buildings, and there were assigned a six-by-three-foot rectangle of earth apiece for their actual living. Because, as their Section’s Section Leader (Section Ortman) put it:

  “Those barracks were built for soldiers, not pigs. We leave’m there so you can have the fun of standing official inspection every Saturday morning.”

  Then he drew a line in the air with the swagger stick he carried under his arm and informed them that this was the magic line,ten feet out from the building, and he didn’t want to see any of them crossing it, except on a direct order.

  Ortman was small and broad and dark. He wore the ribbons of the Lehaunan campaign on his parade jacket, and did not smile as he talked.

  Cal was thinking of Annie. Consciously thinking of Annie.

  Six weeks later—by the time the contingent was ready for Advanced, the second half of Basic Training—the image of Annie had worn thin. So had Cal’s memory of his first Basic, seven years before. A new bitterness had taken its place.

  For the first time in his years with the Service, that curious alchemy that draws a soldier close to other men in his own outfit—Wing, Section and Squad—had failed him. He was a man apart. To the rest of the trainees (the facts were in his file; they had not taken long to leak out) he was a veteran. To the cadre-men over the trainees and himself, he was a freak—neither true recruit, nor true soldier—walled off from them by the wall of military discipline. To the other Contacts Cadets putting in their stint, he was an enigma lacking in the proper ideals and theories.

  Washun, his seatmate on the ride to the Fort from Denver, had tried to bridge the gap.

  “I’ve been talking to some of the other cadets in the outfit,” he said to Cal one day after chow. “And we’d appreciate it if you’d give us a little talk, sometime, and help us out.”

  “A talk?” Cal looked up from polishing his mess kit.

  “On how to be a soldier,” said Washun. Cal gave him a long stare; but the boy was serious.

  “Go get shot at,” said Cal, and went back to polishing his mess kit. He heard Washun rise and leave him.

  Washun was one of those in Cal’s squad who did not fit. Unlike Tommy Maleweski, the sharp-faced nineteen-year-old who had bummed the cigaret from Cal on the transport and was now,after six weeks, practically and effectively broken of the habit, Washun was having it harder rather than easier. Maleweski had threatened to arise from his poncho swinging the first time one of the cadremen woke him with a swagger stick. He had not,and was now a trainee corporal. Washun had worked hard and conscientiously at everything while obviously hating it with a fastidious hatred. But he talked too much about abstract matters like ethics and responsibility and was too thin-skinned for his own happiness. The cracks about “gutless wonders” he and other Contacts Cadets—except Cal—were already beginning to get from the other trainees, wounded him deeply. Unlike any of the others, he had already had one fight with a trainee named Liechen from Section A over the term. He had gone into the fight swinging hard and conscientiously, and obviously hating it,and emerged a sort of inconclusive winner. (This, because Ortman and another Section Leader had discovered the fighters and made them keep at it until Liechen dropped, at last, from exhaustion, and could not be made to stand under his own power any longer.)

  As a result of this, however, Washun, after his company punishment with Liechen, had returned to be a sort of minor hero and leader to the Contacts Cadet outcasts. Though he refused all responsibility, they sought him out with their troubles. And this did not make him popular with Ortman, who thought the situation unhealthy.

  “Been holding court again?” he would ask, as they stood in line for informal inspection—inspection that is, of their outdoor,or actual barracks area, which was required to be as tidy as any indoors. Cal, standing next to Washun, would see out of thecomer of his eye the other man go white, as he invariably did when attacked.

  “Yes, Section!” Washun would reply, staring straight ahead,suffering, scorning to take refuge in a lie.

  “Washun,” said Ortman wearily one day, “do you think you’re doing these men a favor? Do you think it’s going to helpthem, lett
ing them go on with the habit of having somebody around to kiss the spot and make it well? Well, answer me—no, don’t.” Ortman sighed wearily. “I’m not up to listening to Societies philosophy this early in the morning. You men!” he shouted, looking up and down the four squad rows of the Section. “Listen to me. This is one damn Section that’s going to pretend it’s made up of men, even if it’s not. From now on if I catch any one of you milk-babies crying on anyone else’s shoulder, they both carry double packs on the next night march. And if I see it again, it’s triple packs. Get that!”

  He turned back to Washun.

  “Shine that mess kit!” he snapped. “Can’t you get a better fit to your fatigues than that? If you’ve got too much time ony our hands that you’ve got to listen to belly-achers, let me know.

  You’ve got a long ways to go to be a soldier, Washun. And that goes for the rest of you.”

  He stepped on down the line and found himself in front of Cal. For a moment their eyes met. Cal stared as if at a stonewall, his face unmoving.

  Ortman stepped on.

  “You, Sterreir, tear up that kit layout and lay it back downright. Jacks, wash those fatigues and re-press them. Maleweski . . .”

  That evening, after chow, a delegation of the Contacts Cadets,lacking Washun, cornered Cal as he was leaving the mess hall and drew him aside.

  “You’ve got to do something about it,” they told him.

  “Me?” Cal stared at them. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Talk to Ortman. He’s picking on Washun,” said a tall boy with a southern accent and a faint mustache. “And Washun’s doing as well as anybody. That’s not right.”

  “So!” said Cal. “Tell Ortman yourself.”

  “He won’t listen to us. But he likes you.”

  “Likes me?”

  “He never eats you out like the rest. You don’t draw the extra duties. He’s all right with you because he knows you’ve been through it before.”

  “Yeah,” said Cal. “And the fact I do things right’s got a little bit to do with it, too. For my money, Ortman’s doing just fine with Washun and the rest of you.”

  “Sure,” said a small cadet with black hair, bitterly. “You don’t want to do anything for us. You like to think you’re one of them, buddy-buddy with the cadre.”

  Cal looked around the group. They stirred uneasily.

  “Don’t get tough with us, Truant,” said the tall boy nervously. “We’re not afraid of you.”

  Cal snorted disgustedly and walked off.

  The first half of Basic had been films, lectures, classes, drill and company small weapons training. With the start of the second half they moved into field and survival training; forced marches, night movements, infiltrations, tactics problems that turned out to be endurance or escape tests. The Section was melted down from its bloated oversize of nearly three hundred men to merely double the size of a regular seventy-five man Section. The drop-outs went not back to civilian life but to the“housekeeping” services, such as Supply and Maintenance.Among them went all the Contacts Cadets in Cal’s section except Cal, the tall southern-accented boy with the mustache, and Washun. And with the going of these other Cadets, came a problem.

  Now that the complainers had gone, Cal was forced to acknowledge that Ortman was, indeed, bearing down unfairly on Washun. Though it had not started out that way, Ortman was only human. But if he had the weapon of legal authority in his possession, Washun had the weapon of martyred superiority. It had come down to a contest between them.

  It was a war of spirit, with each man trying to force the other to admit his way was wrong. And Washun, it now dawned on Cal with gradually increasing shock, was winning. Already he had bent the minds of the other trainees—the other trainees of his own Section, who did not particularly like him—to a feeling that right was on his side. Now he was bending Cal. And one day he would break, if he did not bend, Ortman.

  This was all wrong, Cal told himself. Justice lay with Ortman—it had to lie with Ortman. Ortman was doing his best every day to instill in his Section the knowledge and attitudes that would enable them to survive and conquer in combat. And Washun, with no more authority than that provided to him by a handful of half-baked, wildly impractical theories, was setting himself up to treat that knowledge and those attitudes as something slightly unclean.

  Cal found himself hating Washun. Washun had broken down Cal’s protective isolation. Washun was, as Cal’s father had been,one of those who, by an irrational insistence on doing good,caused only tragedy and harm. Cal could almost hear Washun quoting, as Cal’s father had quoted:

  “Societies: a philosophy which states that mankind can continue to exist only by evolution into a condition in which the individual’s first responsibility is to a universal code of ethics and only secondarily to the needs of himself as an individual. ”Cal found himself impatient for the day when Ortman would finally lose his temper and rack Washun back for good.

  It was not long before that happened. They had been run through the infiltration course several times before, crawling on their bellies over the rocky ground under full pack and with solid shell and fire rifle jets screaming by a few feet overhead. But the day came on which they were sent through during an after-noon thunderstorm. The trainees, who had started out griping at the weather conditions, discovered that the suddenly greasy mud produced a skating-rink surface on which it was almost a pleasure to wiggle along. Spirits rose. They started larking about and a trainee named Wackell either raised himself incautiously or a bullet dropped, as sometimes happened. He took a wad of steel from a high-powered explosive rifle through his shoulder and thigh. He began to yell and Washun, who was nearby, went to him.

  “All right,” said Ortman, when they all stood dripping water and mud once more in Section formation in front of their barracks. “You all heard it; you heard it fifty times. In combat a soldier doesn’t stop to pick people up. He keeps going. Have you got anything to say to that, Washun?”

  “No, Section,” said Washun, staring straight ahead. Ortman had at least broken him of arguing in ranks.

  “No, come on,” said Ortman. “I’m sure you’ve got something to say. Let’s hear it.”

  “Simply,” said Washun, whitely, staring at the mess hall opposite, “that that is to be my duty—Wing Aidman to some unit during the initial stages of an assault. Everyone knows that. I won’t be carrying weapons, I’ll be picking men like Wackell up.”

  “Fine,” said Ortman. “You pick them up. You pick them up when the time comes. But right now you’re training to be a soldier, not a Contacts Cutie. And you’re going to learn a soldier doesn’t stop to pick anyone up! Maleweski! Jones! Northwest and southwest comers of die barracks to shag this man! Full equipment and all, Washun. Get going. I’m going to run you around the mountain!”

  Washun took one step forward out of ranks, rightfaced and began to trot around the barracks. Maleweski took a cut at him with the peeled wand that served the trainee non-coms for swagger sticks, as Washun lumbered past.

  “Fall out! Shower, chow—and clean equipment!” barked Ortman at the rest of the section. “And watch that mud in the barracks!”

  The orderly ranks disintegrated, as Washun came running heavily around the near side of the barracks. Without looking at him, they poured into the barracks.

  Twenty minutes later, cleaned, dressed and chowed, Cal stepped once more out of the mess hall with his fresh-rinsed mess kit in one hand, smoking in the cool sunset air. Across a little space from him, he saw Washun still running around the barracks, although Maleweski and Jones had been relieved by two other trainee non-coms so that they could dress and eat. Washun ran, not fast, weaving only a little; but his eyes were already glazed.

  It was not unusual for a man in good condition to run an hour or more around the mountain before he gave out. There was no compulsion upon him to make speed, but merely to keep going.The punishment was not a physical one, but mental. The barracks were large enough around so
that the running man could not become dizzy. But after about a dozen circuits the mind began to lose count of the number of times the same comer had come up. The turning, rocking world out beyond the barracks took on an unreal quality, as if the running man was on a tread-mill. It seemed he had run forever and that there was no end ever coming to the running. It was a small, circular hell in which the mind waited for the superbly conditioned body to give up, to quit, to collapse; and the animal-stupid body, sweating under the heavy harness of equipment, gasping for breath, ran on,struggling to prolong its own sufferings in limbo.

  Ortman, of course, could stop it at any time. But he probably would not.

  Cal watched the running man. He still felt no kindness for Washun and from his point of view there was nothing wrong with running a man around the mountain. What was bothering him, he discovered, was a tricky point rooted in the sense of right and wrong of a professional soldier.

  What bothered him was the fact that the punishment was misapplied. Running a man around the mountain was a last resort;and it was like a scrub brush shower for a trainee that refused to stay clean. It was used for a man who was a consistent goof-off and whom nothing else, probably, could save.

  But Washun was not a consistent goof-off. Within certain limits he was as good as any other trainee in the Section. And he was not savable, because he was lost already, to the Contacts Service. Nor could his punishment serve the purpose of a good example to the rest of the Section, who did not walk in Washun’s ways, in any case.

  Ortman, in Cal’s eyes, was the Service. In letting himself be forced into going the limit with Washun, without adequate reason, Ortman had acknowledged his inability to conquer the Con-tact Cadet. He had lost. And Washun, weaving blindly now as he ran around the unending white walls of the barracks, had won.

  “Truant!”

  Cal turned sharply. It was Ortman, coming up to him from the direction of the orderly room.

  “Get down to the orderly room, on the double,” said Ortman. “It’s not exactly according to regulations for one of you trainees. But you’ve got some visitors.”