A Matter For Men Part 2

"Yes."

"Well, what do you think?"

I said, "I don't know. What am I supposed to think?"

"Never answer a question with a question, for one thing."

"My father used to tell me that's the only way to answer a rhetorical question."

Duke slurped his coffee and grimaced. "Ugh. It gets worse every day. But don't tell Sergeant Kelly I said so." He looked at me speculatively. "Can you operate a flamethrower?"

"Huh?"

"I'll a.s.sume that's a 'no.' How fast can you learn? By the end of the week?"

"I don't know. I guess so. Why?"

"I need a backup man. I thought you might want the job." I started to protest-Duke ignored it. "This time it's not just a scouting foray; it's a search and destroy. We're going back to do what we should have done yesterday. Burn some worms." He waited for my answer.

"I don't know," I said at last.

His eyes were steady. "What's the problem?"

"I don't think I'm much of a military type; that's all."

"No, that isn't all." He fixed me with his steely gray eyes and waited.

I felt transparent before him. I tried to glance away, but I felt drawn back to his face. Duke was grim, but not angry-just patient.

I said slowly, "I came out here to study the worms. This ... doesn't exactly fit my expectations. n.o.body told me I'd have to be a soldier."

Duke said, "You're getting military credit for it, aren't you?"

"Service credit," I corrected. I'd been lucky. My biology background had qualified as a "needed skill"-but just barely.

Duke made a face. "So? Out here we don't draw lines that thin. There's no difference."

"I beg your pardon, Duke, but there's a lot of difference."

"Eh? How so?"

"It's in my contract. I'm attached as a scientist. Nowhere does it say I have to be a soldier."

Duke leaned back in his chair. "Better take another look at that contract, boy-the 'special duties' clause."

I quoted from memory-we had studied it in school; Duke raised his eyebrows, but let me continue. " 'In addition, the employee may be required by the employer, as represented by his/her immediate, or otherwise, superiors, to perform any special or unique duties for which he is properly and duly equipped, whether by training, nature or other; and which relate or pertain to the basic obligation as herein detailed-' " Duke smiled. I continued, " '-except where those duties are in direct conflict with the intent of this contract.' "

Duke was still smiling. "That's right, McCarthy-and the duties I'm asking of you are not in direct conflict. You're not under a 'peaceful intention' clause, are you?"

"Uh, I don't know."

"You're not. If you were, you'd have never been sent up. Every man here has two jobs-his own and killing worms. Do I have to say which one takes priority?"

I said slowly, "What does that mean?"

"That means," said Duke, "that if the mission is military, everyone is a soldier. We can't afford to watch out for deadheads. I need a backup man. You want to study worms, learn how to operate a flamethrower."

"That's what you mean by 'special duties,' huh?"

He said calmly, "That's right. You know I can't order you, McCarthy. Any operation requiring a risk to life has to be entirely voluntary. And not the old-fashioned 'I'll take you, you, and you' kind of volunteering either." Duke put down his coffee cup. "But I'll make it easy on you. You have till tomorrow to choose. When you do, go see Shorty. Otherwise, you're shipping out on Thursday's chopper. Got that?"

I didn't answer. "Did you get it?"

"I got it!" I snapped.

"Good." Duke stood up. "You already know what you're going to choose, Jim-there's no question about that. So quit obsessing over it and get on with the job. We don't have the time."

He was right, and I knew it, but it wasn't fair, his pressuring me.

He caught the meaning of my silence and shook his head. "Get off it, Jim. You're never going to be any readier than you are now."

"But I'm not ready at all!"

"That's what I meant. If you were, we wouldn't need to have this conversation. So ... what is it?" I looked up at him. "Yes...?"

"Uh-I'm scared," I admitted. "What if I screw up?"

Duke grinned. "There's a very simple test to know if you've screwed up. If you have, you've been eaten. Everything else is success. Remember that."

He picked up his coffee cup to carry it back to the kitchen. "I'll tell Shorty to expect you. Wear clean underwear." Then he turned and left, leaving me staring after him.

FOUR.

LEGALLY, I was already in the army. Had been for three years. Sort of.

You were automatically enlisted when you showed up for your first session of Global Ethics, the only mandatory course in high school. You couldn't graduate without completing the course. And-you found this out only afterward-you hadn't completed the course until you'd earned your honorable discharge. It was all part of the Universal Service Obligation. Rah.

The instructor was somebody named Whitlaw. n.o.body knew much about him. It was his first semester here. We'd heard some rumors though-that he'd once punched a kid for mouthing off and broken his jaw. That he couldn't be fired. That he'd seen active duty in Pakistan-and still had the ears of the men and women he'd killed. That he was still involved in some super-secret operation and this teaching job was just a cover. And so on.

The first time I saw him, I believed it all.

He stumped into the room and slammed his clipboard down onto the desk and confronted us. "All right! I don't want to be here any more than you do! But this is a required course-for all of us-so let's make the best of a bad situation!"

He was a squat bear of a man, gruff-looking and impatient. He had startling white hair and gun-metal gray eyes that could drill you like a laser. His nose was thick; it looked like it had been broken a few times. He looked like a tank, and when he moved, he moved with a peculiar rolling gait. He rocked from step to step, but he was surprisingly graceful.

He stood there at the front of the cla.s.sroom like an undetonated bomb and looked us over with obvious distaste. He glowered at us-an expression we were soon to recognize as an all-purpose glower of intimidation, directed not at any of us individually, but at the cla.s.s as a unit.

"My name is Whitlaw!" he barked. "And I am not a nice man!"

Huh-?

"-So if you think you're going to pa.s.s this cla.s.s by making friends with me, forget it!" He glared at us, as if daring us to glare back. "I don't want to be your friend. So don't waste your time. It's this simple: I have a job to do! It's going to get done. You have a job to do too. You can make it easy on yourself and own the responsibility-or you can fight it and, I promise you, this cla.s.s will be worse than h.e.l.l! Understand?"

He strode to the back of the room then, plucked a comic book out of Joe Bangs's hands and ripped it up. He tossed the pieces in the trash can. "Those of you who think I'm kidding-let me disabuse you of that now. We can save ourselves two weeks of dancing around, testing each other, if you will just a.s.sume the worst. I am a dragon. I am a shark. I am a monster. I will chew you up and spit out your bones."

He was in motion constantly, gliding from one side of the room to the other, pointing, gesturing, stabbing the air with his hand as he talked. "For the next two semesters, you belong to me. This is not a pa.s.s-or-fail course. Everybody pa.s.ses when I teach. Because I don't give you any choice an the matter. Most of you, when you're given a choice, you don't choose to win. That guarantees your failure. Well, guess what. In here, you don't have a choice. And the sooner you get that, the sooner you can get out." He stopped. He looked around the room at all of us. His eyes were hard and small. He said, "I am a very ugly man. I know it. I have no investment in proving otherwise. So don't expect me to be anything else. If there's any adapting to be done in this cla.s.sroom, I expect you to do it! Any questions?"

"Uh, yeah-" One of the clowns in the back of the room. "How do I get out?"

"You don't. Any other questions?"

There were none. Most of us were too stunned.

"Good." Whitlaw returned to the front of the room. "I expect a hundred percent attendance, one hundred percent of the time. There are no excuses. This cla.s.s is about results. Most of you use your circ.u.mstances as reasons to not have results." He looked into our eyes as if he were looking into our souls. "That's over, starting now! From now on, your circ.u.mstances are merely the things you have to handle so you can have results."

One of the girls raised her hand. "What if we get sick?"

"Are you planning to?"

"No."

"Then you don't have to worry about it."

Another girl. "What if we-"

"Stop!" Whitlaw held up a hand. "Do you see? You're already trying to negotiate a loophole for yourselves. It's called, 'What if -?' 'What if I get sick?' The answer is, make sure you don't. 'What if my car breaks down?' Make sure it doesn't-or make sure you have alternate transportation. Forget the loopholes. There aren't any! The universe doesn't give second chances. Neither do I. Just be here. You don't have a choice. That's how this cla.s.s works. a.s.sume that I'm holding a gun to your head. Because I am-you don't know what kind of a gun it is yet, but the fact is, I am holding a gun to your head. Either you're here and on time, or I pull the trigger and splatter your worthless brains on the back wall." He pointed. Somebody shuddered. I actually turned to look. I could imagine a red and gray splash of gore across the paneling.

"Do you get that?" He took our silence as a.s.sent. "Good. We might just get along."

Whitlaw leaned back casually against the front edge of his desk. He folded his arms across his chest and looked out over the room.

He smiled. The effect was terrifying.

"So now," he said calmly, "I'm going to tell you about the one choice you do have. The only choice. All the rest are illusions-or, at best, reflections of this one. You ready? All right-here's the options: you can be free, or you can be cattle. That's it."

He waited for our reactions. There were a lot of puzzled expressions in the room.

"You're waiting for the rest of it, aren't you? You think there has to be more. Well, there isn't any rest of it. That's all there is. What you think of as the rest is just definitions-or applications. That's what we're going to spend the rest of this course talking about. Sounds easy, right? But it won't be-because you'll insist on making it hard; because this course is not just about the definitions of that choice-it's about the experience of it. Most of you aren't going to like it. Too bad. But this isn't about what you like. What you like or don't like is not a valid basis for choice in the world. You're going to learn that in here."

That's how he started out.

It went downhill from there-or uphill, depending on your perspective.

Whitlaw never entered the room until everybody was seated and settled. He said it was our responsibility to run the cla.s.s-after all, he already knew the material; this cla.s.s was for us.

He always began the same way. When he judged we were ready, he entered-and he always entered speaking: "All right, who wants to start? Who wants to define freedom?" And we were off One of the girls offered, "It's the right to do what you want, isn't it?"

"Too simple," he countered. "I want to rip off all your clothes and have mad pa.s.sionate intercourse with you, right here on the floor." He said it deadpan, staring her right in the face. The girl gasped; the cla.s.s laughed embarra.s.sedly; she blushed. "What keeps me from doing it?" Whitlaw asked. "Anyone?"

"The law," someone called. "You'd be arrested." More laughter.

"Then I'm not completely free, am I?"

"Uh, well ... freedom is the right to do whatever you want as long as you don't infringe on the rights of others."

"Sounds good to me-but how do I determine what those rights are? I want to practice building atomic bombs in my back yard. Why can't I?"

"You'd be endangering others."

"Who says?"

"Well, if I were your neighbor, I wouldn't like it."

"Why are you so touchy? I haven't had one go off yet."

"But there's always the chance. We have to protect ourselves."

"Aha!" said Whitlaw, pushing back his white hair and advancing on the unfortunate student. "But now you're infringing on my rights when you say I can't build my own A-bombs."

"Sir, you're being ridiculous now. Everybody knows you can't build an A-bomb in your back yard."

"Oh? I don't know that. In fact, I could build one if I had access to the materials and enough time and money. The,principles are well known. You're just betting that I don't have the determination to carry it through."

"Uh-all right. But even if you did, the rights of the individual still have to be weighed against the safety of the general public."

"How's that again? Are you telling me that one person's rights are more important than another's?"

"No, I-"

"Sure sounded like it to me. You said my rights have to be weighed against everyone else's. I want to know how you're going to determine them. Remember, all of us are supposed to be equal before the law. And what are you going to do if I don't think your method is fair? How are you going to enforce your decision?" Whitlaw eyed the boy carefully. "Try this one-it's more likely: I'm a plague victim. I want to get to a hospital for treatment, but if I even approach your city, you're going to start shooting at me. I claim that my right to medical care guarantees me entrance to that hospital, but you claim that your right to be free of contamination gives you license to kill. Whose rights are being infringed upon the most?"

"That's not a fair example!"

"Huh? Why not? It's happening in South Africa right nowand I don't care what the South African government says about it, we're talking about rights. Why isn't this a fair example? It's your definition. Sounds to me like there's something wrong with your definition of freedom." Whitlaw eyed the uncomfortable boy. "Hm?"

The boy shook his head. He gave up.

"So, let me give you a hint." Whitlaw turned to the rest of us again. "Freedom is not about what you want. That doesn't mean you can't have what you want-you probably can. But I want you to recognize that going for the goodies is just going for the goodies, nothing else. It has very little to do with freedom." He sat down on the edge of the desk again and looked around. "Anyone have another?"

Silence. Embarra.s.sed silence. Then, a voice: "Responsibility."