Starship Troopers Part 8

But, in general, powered armor doesn't require practice; it simply does it for you, just the way you were doing it, only better. All but one thing - you can't scratch where it itches. If I ever find a suit that will let me scratch between my shoulder blades, I'll marry it.

There are three main types of M. I. armor: marauder, command, and scout. Scout suits are very fast and very long-range, but lightly armed. Command suits are heavy on go juice and jump juice, are fast and can jump high; they have three times as much comm & radar gear as other suits, and a dead-reckoning tracker, inertial. Marauders are for those guys in ranks with the sleepy look - the executioners.

As I may have said, I fell in love with powered armor, even though my first crack at it gave me a strained shoulder. Any day thereafter that my section was allowed to practice in suits was a big day for me. The day I goofed I had simulated sergeant's chevrons as a simulated section leader and was armed with simulated A-bomb rockets to use in simulated darkness against a simulated enemy. That was the trouble everything was simulated - but you are required to behave as if it is all real.

We were retreating - "advancing toward the rear," I mean - and one of the instructors cut the power on one of my men by radio control, making him a helpless casualty. Per M. I. doctrine, I ordered the pickup, felt rather c.o.c.ky that I had managed to get the order out before my number two cut out to do it anyhow, turned to do the next thing I had to do, which was to lay down a simulated atomic ruckus to discourage the simulated enemy overtaking us.

Our flank was swinging; I was supposed to fire it sort of diagonally but with the required s.p.a.cing to protect my own men from blast while still putting it in close enough to trouble the bandits. On the bounce, of course. The movement over the terrain and the problem itself had been discussed ahead of time; we were still green - the only variations supposed to be left in were casualties.

Doctrine required me to locate exactly exactly, by radar beacon, my own men who could be affected by the blast. But this all had to be done fast and I wasn't too sharp at reading those little radar displays anyhow. I cheated just a touch - flipped my snoopers up and looked, bare eyes in broad daylight. I left plenty of room. Shucks, I could see see the only man affected, half a mile away, and all I had was just a little bitty H. E. rocket, intended to make a lot of smoke and not much else. So I picked a spot by eye, took the rocket launcher and let fly. the only man affected, half a mile away, and all I had was just a little bitty H. E. rocket, intended to make a lot of smoke and not much else. So I picked a spot by eye, took the rocket launcher and let fly.

Then I bounced away, feeling smug - no seconds lost.

And had my power cut in the air. This doesn't hurt you; it's a delayed action, executed by your landing. I grounded and there I stuck, squatting, held upright by gyros but unable to move. You do not repeat not not move when surrounded by a ton of metal with your power dead. move when surrounded by a ton of metal with your power dead.

Instead I cussed to myself - I hadn't thought that they would make me a casualty when I was supposed to be leading the problem. Shucks and other comments.

I should have known that Sergeant Zim would be monitoring the section leader.

He bounced over to me, spoke to me privately on the face to face. He suggested that I might be able to get a job sweeping floors since I was too stupid, clumsy, and careless to handle dirty dishes. He discussed my past and probable future and several other things that I did not want to hear about. He ended by saying tonelessly, "How would you like to have Colonel Dubois see what you've done?"

Then he left me. I waited there, crouched over, for two hours until the drill was over. The suit, which had been feather-light, real seven-league boots, felt like an Iron Maiden. At last he returned for me, restored power, and we bounced together at top speed to BHQ.

Captain Frankel said less but it cut more.

Then he paused and added in that flat voice officers use when quoting regulations: "You may demand trial by court-martial if such be your choice. How say you?"

I gulped and said, "No, sir!" Until that moment I hadn't fully realized just how much much trouble I was in. trouble I was in.

Captain Frankel seemed to relax slightly. "Then we'll see what the Regimental Commander has to say. Sergeant, escort the prisoner." We walked rapidly over to RHQ and for the first time I met the Regimental Commander face to face - and by then I was sure that I was going to catch a court no matter what. But I remembered sharply how Ted Hendrick had talked himself into one; I said nothing.

Major Malloy said a total of five words to me. After hearing Sergeant Zim, he said three of them: "Is that correct?"

I said, "Yes, sir," which ended my part of it.

Major Malloy said, to Captain Frankel: "Is there any possibility of salvaging this man?"

Captain Frankel answered, "I believe so, sir."

Major Malloy said, "Then we'll try administrative punishment," turned to me and said: "Five lashes."

Well, they certainly didn't keep me dangling. Fifteen minutes later the doctor had completed checking my heart and the Sergeant of the Guard was outfitting me with that special shirt which comes off without having to be pulled over the hands - zippered from the neck down the arms. a.s.sembly for parade had just sounded. I was feeling detached, unreal . . . which I have learned is one way of being scared right out of your senses. The nightmare hallucination - Zim came into the guard tent just as the call ended. He glanced at the Sergeant of the Guard - Corporal Jones - and Jones went out. Zim stepped up to me, slipped something into my hand. "Bite on that," he said quietly. "It helps. I know."

It was a rubber mouthpiece such as we used to avoid broken teeth in hand-to-hand combat drill. Zim left. I put it in my mouth. Then they handcuffed me and marched me out.

The order read: " - in simulated combat, gross negligence which would in action have caused the death of a teammate." Then they peeled off my shirt and strung me up.

Now here is a very odd thing: A flogging isn't as hard to take as it is to watch. I don't mean it's a picnic. It hurts worse than anything else I've ever had happen to me, and the waits between strokes are worse than the strokes themselves. But the mouthpiece did help and the only yelp I let out never got past it.

Here's the second odd thing: n.o.body ever mentioned it to me, not even other boots. So far as I could see, Zim and the instructors treated me exactly the same afterwards as they had before. From the instant the doctor painted the marks and told me to go back to duty it was all done with, completely. I even managed to eat a little at dinner that night and pretend to take part in the jawing at the table.

Another thing about administrative punishment: There is no permanent black mark. Those records are destroyed at the end of boot training and you start clean. The only record is one where it counts most.

You don't forget it.

Chapter 8.

Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs XXII:6 .

There were other floggings but darn few. Hendrick was the only man in our regiment to be flogged by sentence of court-martial; the others were administrative punishment, like mine, and for lashes it was necessary to go all the way up to the Regimental Commander - which a subordinate commander finds distasteful, to put it faintly. Even then, Major Malloy was much more likely to kick the man out, "Undesirable Discharge," than to have the whipping post erected. In a way, an administrative flogging is the mildest sort of a compliment; it means that your superiors think that there is a faint possibility that you just might have the character eventually to make a soldier and a citizen, unlikely as it seems at the moment.

I was the only one to get the maximum administrative punishment; none of the others got more than three lashes. n.o.body else came as close as I did to putting on civilian clothes but still squeaked by. This is a social distinction of sorts. I don't recommend it.

But we had another case, much worse than mine or Ted Hendrick's - a really sick-making one. Once they erected gallows.

Now, look, get this straight. This case didn't really have anything to do with the Army. The crime didn't take place at Camp Currie and the placement officer who accepted this boy for M. I. should turn in his suit.

He deserted, only two days after we arrived at Currie. Ridiculous, of course, but nothing about the case made sense - why didn't he resign? Desertion, naturally, is one of the "thirty-one crash landings" but the Army doesn't invoke the death penalty for it unless there are special circ.u.mstances, such as "in the face of the enemy" or something else that turns it from a highly informal way of resigning into something that can't be ignored.

The Army makes no effort to find deserters and bring them back. This makes the hardest kind of sense. We're all volunteers; we're M. I. because we want to be, we're proud to be M. I. and the M. I. is proud of us. If a man doesn't feel that way about it, from his callused feet to his hairy ears, I don't want him on my flank when trouble starts. If I buy a piece of it, I want men around me who will pick me up because they're M. I. and I'm M. I. and my skin means as much to them as their own. I don't want any ersatz soldiers, dragging their tails and ducking out when the party gets rough. It's a whole lot safer to have a blank file on your flank than to have an alleged soldier who is nursing the "conscript" syndrome. So if they run, let 'em run; it's a waste of time and money to fetch them back.

Of course most of them do come back, though it may take them years - in which case the Army tiredly lets them have their fifty lashes instead of hanging them, and turns them loose. I suppose it must wear on a man's nerves to be a fugitive when everybody else is either a citizen or a legal resident, even when the police aren't trying to find him. "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." The temptation to turn yourself in, take your lumps, and breathe easily again must get to be overpowering.

But this boy didn't turn himself in. He was gone four months and I doubt if his own company remembered him, since he had been with them only a couple of days; he was probably just a name without a face, the "Dillinger, N. L." who had to be reported, day after day, as absent without leave on the morning muster.

Then he killed a baby girl.

He was tried and convicted by a local tribunal but ident.i.ty check showed that he was an undischarged soldier; the Department had to be notified and our commanding general at once intervened. He was returned to us, since military law and jurisdiction take precedence over civil code.

Why did the general bother? Why didn't he let the local sheriff do the job?

In order to "teach us a lesson"?

Not at all. I'm quite sure that our general did not think that any of his boys needed to be nauseated in order not to kill any baby girls. By now I believe that he would have spared us the sight - had it been possible.

We did learn a lesson, though n.o.body mentioned it at the time and it is one that takes a long time to sink in until it becomes second nature: The M. I. take care of their own - no matter what.

Dillinger belonged to us, he was still on our rolls. Even though we didn't want him, even though we should never have had him, even though we would have been happy to disclaim him, he was a member of our regiment. We couldn't brush him off and let a sheriff a thousand miles away handle it. If it has to be done, a man - a real man - shoots his own dog himself; he doesn't hire a proxy who may bungle it.

The regimental records said that Dillinger was ours, so taking care of him was our duty.

That evening we marched to the parade grounds at slow march, sixty beats to the minute (hard to keep step, when you're used to a hundred and forty), while the band played "Dirge for the Unmourned." Then Dillinger was marched out, dressed in M. I. full dress just as we were, and the band played "Danny Deever" while they stripped off every trace of insignia, even b.u.t.tons and cap, leaving him in a maroon and light blue suit that was no longer a uniform. The drums held a sustained roll and it was all over.

We pa.s.sed in review and on home at a fast trot I don't think anybody fainted and I don't think anybody quite got sick, even though most of us didn't eat much dinner that night and I've never heard the mess tent so quiet. But, grisly as it was (it was the first time I had seen death, first time for most of us), it was not the shock that Ted Hendrick's flogging was - I mean, you couldn't put yourself in Dillinger's place; you didn't have any feeling of: "It could have been me." Not counting the technical matter of desertion, Dillinger had committed at least four capital crimes; if his victim had lived, he still would have danced Danny Deever for any one of the other three - kidnapping, demand of ransom, criminal neglect, etc.

I had no sympathy for him and still haven't. That old saw about "To understand all is to forgive all" is a lot of tripe. Some things, the more you understand the more you loathe them. My sympathy is reserved for Barbara Anne Enthwaite whom I had never seen, and for her parents, who would never again see their little girl.

As the band put away their instruments that night we started thirty days of mourning for Barbara and of disgrace for us, with our colors draped in black, no music at parade, no singing on route march. Only once did I hear anybody complain and another boot promptly asked him how he would like a full set of lumps? Certainly, it hadn't been our fault - but our business was to guard little girls, not kill them. Our regiment had been dishonored; we had to clean it. We were disgraced and we felt felt disgraced. disgraced.

That night I tried to figure out how such things could be kept from happening. Of course, they hardly ever do nowadays - but even once is 'way too many. I never did reach an answer that satisfied me. This Dillinger - he looked like anybody else, and his behavior and record couldn't have been too odd or he would never have reached Camp Currie in the first place. I suppose he was one of those pathological personalities you read about - no way to spot them.

Well, if there was no way to keep it from happening once, there was only one sure way to keep it from happening twice. Which we had used.

If Dillinger had understood what he was doing (which seemed incredible) then he got what was coming to him . . . except that it seemed a shame that he hadn't suffered as much as had little Barbara Anne - he practically hadn't suffered at all.

But suppose, as seemed more likely, that he was so crazy that he had never been aware that he was doing anything wrong? What then?

Well, we shoot mad dogs, don't we?

Yes, but being crazy that way is a sickness - I couldn't see but two possibilities. Either he couldn't be made well - in which case he was better dead for his own sake and for the safety of others - or he could be treated and made sane. In which case (it seemed to me) if he ever became sane enough for civilized society . . . and thought over what he had done while he was "sick" - what could be left for him but suicide? How could he live with himself?

And suppose he escaped before before he was cured and did the same thing again? And maybe he was cured and did the same thing again? And maybe again? again? How do you explain How do you explain that that to bereaved parents? In view of his record? to bereaved parents? In view of his record?

I couldn't see but one answer.

I found myself mulling over a discussion in our cla.s.s in History and Moral Philosophy. Mr. Dubois was talking about the disorders that preceded the breakup of the North American republic, back in the XXth century. According to him, there was a time just before they went down the drain when such crimes as Dillinger's were as common as dogfights. The Terror had not been just in North America - Russia and the British Isles had it, too, as well as other places. But it reached its peak in North America shortly before things went to pieces.

"Law-abiding people," Dubois had told us, "hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons . . . to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably - or even killed. This went on for years, right up to the war between the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance and the Chinese Hegemony. Murder, drug addiction, larceny, a.s.sault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places - these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark."

I had tried to imagine such things happening in our schools. I simply couldn't. Nor in our parks. A park was a place for fun, not for getting hurt. As for getting killed in one - "Mr. Dubois, didn't they have police? Or courts?"

"They had many more police than we have. And more courts. All overworked."

"I guess I don't get it." If a boy in our city had done anything half that bad . . . well, he and his father would have been flogged side by side. But such things just didn't happen.

Mr. Dubois then demanded of me, "Define a 'juvenile delinquent.' "

"Uh, one of those kids - the ones who used to beat up people."

"Wrong."

"Huh? But the book said - "

"My apologies. Your textbook does so state. But calling a tail a leg does not make the name fit 'Juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms, one which gives a clue to their problem and their failure to solve it. Have you ever raised a puppy?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you housebreak him?"

"Err . . . yes, sir. Eventually." It was my slowness in this that caused my mother to rule that dogs must stay out of the house.

"Ah, yes. When your puppy made mistakes, were you angry?"

"What? Why, he didn't know any better; he was just a puppy.

"What did you do?"

"Why, I scolded him and rubbed his nose in it and paddled him."

"Surely he could not understand your words?"

"No, but he could tell I was sore at him!"

"But you just said that you were not angry."

Mr. Dubois had an infuriating way of getting a person mixed up. "No, but I had to make him think think I was. He had to learn, didn't he?" I was. He had to learn, didn't he?"

"Conceded. But, having made it clear to him that you disapproved, how could you be so cruel as to spank him as well? You said the poor beastie didn't know that he was doing wrong. Yet you indicted pain. Justify yourself! Or are you a s.a.d.i.s.t?"

I didn't then know what a s.a.d.i.s.t was - but I knew pups. "Mr. Dubois, you have to! have to! You scold him so that he knows he's in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won't do it again - and you have to do it right away! It doesn't do a bit of good to punish him later; you'll just confuse him. Even so, he won't learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it's a waste of breath just to scold him." Then I added, "I guess you've never raised pups." You scold him so that he knows he's in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won't do it again - and you have to do it right away! It doesn't do a bit of good to punish him later; you'll just confuse him. Even so, he won't learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it's a waste of breath just to scold him." Then I added, "I guess you've never raised pups."

"Many. I'm raising a dachshund now - by your methods. Let's get back to those juvenile criminals. The most vicious averaged somewhat younger than you here in this cla.s.s . . . and they often started their lawless careers much younger. Let us never forget that puppy. These children were often caught; police arrested batches each day. Were they scolded? Yes, often scathingly. Were their noses rubbed in it? Rarely. News organs and officials usually kept their names secret - in many places the law so required for criminals under eighteen. Were they spanked? Indeed not! Many had never been spanked even as small children; there was a widespread belief that spanking, or any punishment involving pain, did a child permanent psychic damage."

(I had reflected that my father must never have heard of that theory.) "Corporal punishment in schools was forbidden by law," he had gone on. "Flogging was lawful as sentence of court only in one small province, Delaware, and there only for a few crimes and was rarely invoked; it was regarded as 'cruel and unusual punishment.' " Dubois had mused aloud, "I do not understand objections to 'cruel and unusual' punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment - and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism? However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense.

"As for 'unusual,' punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose." He then pointed his stump at another boy. "What would happen if a puppy were spanked every hour?"

"Uh . . . probably drive him crazy!"

"Probably. It certainly will not teach him anything. How long has it been since the princ.i.p.al of this school last had to switch a pupil?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. About two years. The kid that swiped - "

"Never mind. Long enough. It means that such punishment is so unusual as to be significant, to deter, to instruct. Back to these young criminals - They probably were not spanked as babies; they certainly were not flogged for their crimes. The usual sequence was: for a first offense, a warning - a scolding, often without trial. After several offenses a sentence of confinement but with sentence suspended and the youngster placed on probation. A boy might be arrested many times and convicted several times before he was punished - and then it would be merely confinement, with others like him from whom he learned still more criminal habits. If he kept out of major trouble while confined, he could usually evade most of even that mild punishment, be given probation - 'paroled' in the jargon of the times.

"This incredible sequence could go on for years while his crimes increased in frequency and viciousness, with no punishment whatever save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements. Then suddenly, usually by law on his eighteenth birthday, this so-called 'juvenile delinquent' becomes an adult criminal - and sometimes wound up in only weeks or months in a death cell awaiting execution for murder. You - " You - "

He had singled me out again. "Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house . . . and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still still not housebroken - whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead. Comment, please?" not housebroken - whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead. Comment, please?"

"Why . . . that's the craziest way to raise a dog I ever heard of!"

"I agree. Or a child. Whose fault would it be?"

"Uh . . . why, mine, I guess."

"Again I agree. But I'm not guessing."

"Mr. Dubois," a girl blurted out, "but why? Why didn't they spank little kids when they needed it and use a good dose of the strap on any older ones who deserved it - the sort of lesson they wouldn't forget! I mean ones who did things really bad bad. Why not?"

"I don't know," he had answered grimly, "except that the time-tested method of instilling social virtue and respect for law in the minds of the young did not appeal to a pre-scientific pseudo-professional cla.s.s who called themselves 'social workers' or sometimes 'child psychologists.' It was too simple for them, apparently, since anybody could do it, using only the patience and firmness needed in training a puppy. I have sometimes wondered if they cherished a vested interest in disorder - but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious 'highest motives' no matter what their behavior."