Farmland had ended several minutes back. Now rolling forest passed beneath the troop transport, a patchwork of late summer yellows and reds interrupted by occasional meadows, fens and marshes, lakes and streams. Narrow ribbons of road showed here and there, still summer green and seemingly without traffic.
Jerym Alsnor sat twisted in his bench seat to watch, feeling uncomfortable at what he saw. It was utterly different from the tailored industrial city of Pelstron where he'd lived all his seventeen years, and he felt sure that this unpeopled backwoods was where he'd be unloaded.
The Blue Forest Military Reservation they'd called it, back at the assembly center. He didn't know about the blue, but forest certainly fitted.
When he'd signed up, it had seemed the solution to everything, and an opportunity for adventure. But he'd also signed away his options, his freedoms, shaky as they'd already become, and now he was afraid he'd done the wrong thing. Again.
Ahead, buildings appeared, not of a town. Small buildings, looking somehow institutional. He felt deceleration: This was it—the Blue Forest Reservation.
Others had been looking too. Until then the floater had been remarkably quiet. Now a murmur began, and the recruits on the middle banks of seats got up, coming over to look out the windows, elbowing each other. Jerym might have felt hostile at the crowding, the encroachment, but his attention was too much on the buildings and their grounds. They weren't a kind of buildings and grounds he understood.
The transport began settling, sinking faster than his stomach liked. Its crew, in blue-gray uniforms, came down the aisles with batons, ordering the youths back to their seats, those who'd gotten up to see, whacking a few who lingered. The recruits obeyed, much more docile than might have been expected; they were in unfamiliar circumstances, felt exposed and vulnerable, didn't know what to expect.
Besides that, they didn't know each other. Under the circumstances not many had struck up conversations. Almost all were loners, misfits, had hardly known others like themselves, maybe two or three, excepting those few who'd been in reformatory. Then, at the assembly center, they'd been hurried, crowded, told to shut up, keep the noise down.
As Jerym watched, things on the ground acquired detail. Most of the buildings were single-storied; some were shed-like, a few mere roofs without walls. Men stood by, seemingly waiting for them, men in green field uniforms. Black men. T'swa! Jerym realized with a start. He felt a gentle landing impact, and one of the crewmen shouted orders. He got up tense, feeling a wash of desperation, sure now that he'd done the wrong thing in signing up. He'd never make it in this place. He'd have to find out how you got out of here; there had to be a way.
Colonel Dak-So, a subcolonel actually, watched the recruits shuffle down the ramp, a hundred of them. He'd never seen anything quite like them till yesterday's batches. Their postures were bad, their auras gray and murky. His noncoms herded them into a crude semblance of ranks. Supposedly they were intentive warriors. Suppressed intentive warriors. He regarded them like a sculptor regarding a new medium. It will be interesting, he thought.
Colonel Carlis Voker watched from a window as the semi-column of recruits slouched by, herded by T'swa noncoms. He was keeping aloof till they were broken in a bit. They'd accept the alien T'swa more readily than they would an old white geezer like himself, he thought; be a lot more impressed by them. They'd had too many old geezers telling them what to do.
They were born to be warriors for a reason, he thought, one we're beginning to see now.
These were the fourth load in today. With the floaters from Vosinlak and Two Rivers due before supper, there'd be 1,200 of them by lights out. The rest would come in tomorrow, which would keep Supply humping. After all the recruits got boots that fit, he'd send most of his supply people home to the army, which they'd no doubt find a big relief.
Tonight would undoubtedly be as crazy as last night. Or maybe not quite. Last night the T'swa had discovered what kind of raw material they'd been presented with, and after their initial surprise, had handled things with quiet, nicely-gauged force.
If these young men were what their tests and interviews said they were, Voker did not doubt at all that they'd leave here the best fighting men the Confederation had ever produced. (He wasn't counting the cadets, who were still preadolescent, nor the T'swa, who were from a trade world.) But it would take some doing. He had no doubt of that either.
Jerym Alsnor was almost a good-looking kid, would have been handsome except for the cast of chronic resentment and evasiveness on his face. He was tall and still growing, shoulders wide but not yet well muscled. His features were strong and regular, his brown hair close cropped by an army barber at the assembly center in Farningum. Though measured in mere hours, that seemed quite a while ago. Now he stepped onto a small, glass-topped platform, feeling foolish in his green fatigues. He didn't need a mirror to know how poorly they fitted. And the paper slippers he'd been given looked even more ridiculous. He was glad no one he knew could see him like this.
An overweight, red-faced corporal scowled and snapped at him. "Pay attention, recruit! Put your heels against the rounded heel plates and stand still."
Jerym did, thinking where he'd really like to put his foot.
"Now keep your weight evenly on your soles and heels." The corporal eyed a blinking red light on the small instrument screen. "Didn't you hear me, recruit? I said evenly!"
The light stopped blinking.
"All right," grumped the corporal after a moment. "Go over to that bench and sit down by the last guy. Someone'll call off your name and number."
Walking to the bench, Jerym glanced again at the numbered tag hanging from his neck. Jerym D. Alsnor, SR-0726-401, BVLN. Oh-seven-two-six dash four-oh-one. Easy enough; the first four numbers were his birth year. He sat down.
"How'd you like that fat sack of shit?" asked the guy next to him, thumbing toward the supply corporal. The name label above the youth's left shirt pocket read Esenrok.
"Like?" Jerym said. "I'd like to kick the snot out of him."
Both of them spoke quietly. They'd seen one recruit sass a sergeant when they'd been getting their uniforms. A very large, calm T'swi had grabbed the poor sucker and frog-marched him pantless out the door, the guy's right arm up behind his back and a big black fist bunching his green field shirt at the collar. It happened so quickly and quietly, you could have been looking the other way for five seconds and missed the whole thing.
The recruit on the other side of Esenrok gazed at him and Jerym as if they were a pair of children. He was older than they, probably nineteen. "Be glad the boots'll fit better than these greens," he said.
"What makes you think they will?"
"They're who's going to train us, make fighting men out of us, and they don't care whether our uniforms fit good or not. Not now anyway. They probably like it this way; keeps us from acting too smart. But our boots? Our boots have to fit or our feet'll go bad."
Jerym eyed the guy's name label, Carrmak, and felt like asking what made him so damn smart. But it didn't seem like the time or place; a T'swa sergeant was standing by the door.
Army guys kept coming to a door and calling names and numbers, and guys would go through the door and out of sight. To get their boots, Jerym supposed. In a few minutes Carrmak went, then Esenrok. Finally they called his name, and Jerym too went through the door. Another army corporal looked at his dog tags to make sure, handed him a pair of boots with treaded soles, and told him to put them on and fasten them. Then prodded and pinched as a last check of their fit, as if he didn't totally trust the computerized fabricator that had just tailor-made them.
"Okay." He pointed. "Out that door and wait."
Jerym went, glad to be rid of his paper slippers, and stood around with the others, waiting for someone to tell them what to do next. Conversations began. A couple of guys—their labels read Warden and Klefma—took off, to find out what would happen. The rest of them speculated on the subject, then two more decided to try it. About three minutes later, two T'swa arrived, a corporal and a sergeant, and had them line up. Each T'swi had a clipboard.
"All right," said the corporal. "When I call your name, raise your hand and say 'Here, sir!' "
He began to read, alphabetically. Here and there, hands popped up and voices answered; a "here, sir" was shouted for every name. When the roll call was done, the sergeant, who'd simply watched, walked along the line of recruits, looking at the names above their shirt pockets. Then he stepped back and gave an order, his deep voice soft but easily heard.
"Barkum, Desterbi, Lonsalek, step forward."
The platoon stood silent, hardly breathing, sensing that something was wrong. The T'swa were large and powerful men from a high-gee world, and their expressions were unreadable, now at least. Uncertain, the three recruits stepped forward. The sergeant walked up to them, opened their shirts and looked at the dog tags dangling from their necks.
"Barkum, why did you answer for Mellis and Thelldon?"
"I don't know. To keep them out of trouble, I guess."
"You have been told how to address a sergeant. Answer my question again. Properly this time."
"Sir! To keep them out of trouble."
The T'swi turned to the next recruit. "Desterbi, you answered for Klefma. Why?"
"Sir, the same thing. To keep him out of trouble."
"Lonsalek? Why did you answer for Warden?"
"Sir, to see what would happen."
The T'swa sergeant nodded, and when he spoke, his voice was conversational. "In this regiment you should not lie to each other, and you very definitely do not lie to your officers." He pointed. "You three stand over there, with your noses touching the wall. Lonsalek wanted to see what would happen. You will find out."
Unexpectedly he whistled then, loud and shrill, one long blast and two short, the sound somehow intimidating. A moment later two more corporals came trotting up. Again the sergeant pointed. "Take these three to temporary detention." The two T'swa went to them, grasped their collars from behind, and shoving, marched them off. None of the three showed any inclination to resist or argue. The sergeant scanned the rest of them. "Corporal, take them to their barracks. They are to remain there till I give further orders."
The sergeant turned and left. "Platooon!" the corporal called. "Attention!" Each recruit came to his version of attention, all promptly, some sullenly. "Riiight face!" They responded appropriately to the unfamiliar command. "Forwaaard, march!"
They started off, stepping on each others' heels at first, muttering till they got the hang of it. Column right and later column left they managed more or less. Platoon halt! was no problem at all.
Then he herded them inside the long, one-story building, where they sat down on their new bunks. No one said anything till he was gone; then Esenrok spoke. "If we'd of jumped the son of a bitch, we could have beat the snot out of him, T'swa or not."
Jerym looked at Esenrok, saying nothing, thinking to himself he wasn't having anything to do with a crazy idea like that.
Again it was Carrmak who answered. "I doubt it. The first three or four that reached him, he'd have broken their necks. And everyone else would have backed off."
"What makes you so damned expert?" Esenrok snarled, getting to his feet.
Carrmak grinned mockingly. He was one of the bigger recruits in the platoon, probably the hairiest, and looked the oldest. "You don't believe me, go call him in. When he comes in, try him and see, you and everyone else that wants to. I'll watch. Maybe I'm wrong."
Blond Esenrok, seventeen, stood perhaps a little short of medium height. He was stocky, still with some baby fat, and so far his pale hair hadn't spread to chin or upper lip. He sat back down, flushing darkly.
"When do they feed us?" someone asked after a minute.
"What do they feed us?" someone else threw in.
Another looked at the wall clock. "It's 1740. I'll bet we eat at 1800."
Mellis and Thelldon came in then, grinning. Mellis looked younger than almost anyone else in the platoon, though at sixteen he was as big as most. "Hi, guys!" he said. "So they finally sent someone to bring you home."
Home! Jerym thought. He'd called this place home!
Thelldon was looking around. "Where's Barkum?" he asked.
"In detention," someone answered. "For lying to a corporal. Him and a couple other guys. For answering up for guys that took off. Like you and him." He indicated Mellis.
Mellis looked worried, Thelldon upset. "Shit!" Thelldon swore.
"What are you guys going to do?" someone asked. "The T'swa are sure to be looking for you."
"Wait here, I guess," Thelldon answered. "See what happens."
"Not me," Mellis said. "I'm getting out of here. I'm finding a road and leaving."
He went to the door, paused to peer around outside, then left.
Jerym and several others got up and went to doors and windows to look out. He saw newcomers being marched to other barracks, still wearing their civilian clothes. It seemed like a long time ago that he'd stuffed his civvies into a bag, tied a tag on it, and given it to a white sergeant. He wondered if he'd ever see it again.
He wished he was back home, arguing with his father.