HOW TO BE A SOLDIER

Brian Aldiss

 

 

Sergeant Taylor was dreaming.

 

He was a certain Colonel whose barracks were far below ground. In the mess, the Special Wing was making merry. The place was overcrowded, both with long trestle tables full of food and wine, and with soldiers and the women who had been invited to attend. Despite the Spartan aspect of the mess, the atmosphere was of festival—that especially hectic kind of festival held by men whose motto is the grim old motto: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

 

The Colonel was eating and drinking, but he was not yet merry. Although it pleased him to see his men carousing, he was cut off from them by their merriment. He still knew what they had forgotten, that at any moment the summons might come. And then they would leave, and collect their equipment, and go Above, to face whatever dark things had to be faced.

 

All this was a part of the Colonel’s profession, his life. He did not resent it, nor did he particularly fear it; he felt only a mild attack of something very like stage fright.

 

The faces around him had receded into a general blur. Now he focused on them, wondering idly who and how many would accompany him on the mission. He glanced too at the women.

 

Under duress of war, all military had retreated underground. Conditions below were harsh and well nigh intolerable, only mitigated by generous supplies of the new synthetic foods and drinks. After a decade of war, plankton brandy tastes as good as the real thing—when the real thing has ceased to exist. The women were not synthetic. They had forsaken the ruinous towns Above for the comparative safety of the subterranean garrison towns. In so doing, most of them had saved their lives only to lose their humanity. Now they fought and screamed over their men, caring little for what they won.

 

The Colonel looked at them with both compassion and con­tempt. Whichever side won the war, women had already lost it.

 

Then he saw a face that was neither laughing nor shouting.

 

It belonged to a woman sitting almost opposite him at his table. She was listening to a blurry-eyed, red-faced corporal, whose heavy arm lay over her shoulder as he spun her some rambling tale of woe. Mary, the Colonel thought; she must be called something simple and sweet like Mary.

 

Her face was ordinary enough, except that it bore none of the marks of viciousness and vulgarity so common in this age. Her hair was light brown, her eyes an enormous blue-grey. Her lips were not thin, though her face was.

 

Mary turned and saw the Colonel regarding her. She smiled at him.

 

The moments of revolution in a man’s life come silently and unexpectedly. The Colonel had been an ordinary soldier; when Mary smiled, he became something more complex. He saw himself as he was: an old man in his middle thirties who had surrendered everything personal to becoming part of a military machine. This sad, beautiful, ordinary, face told of all he had missed, of all the richer side of life real only to a man and woman who love each other.

 

It told him more. It told him that even now it was not too late for him. For the face was a promise as well as a reproach.

 

All this and more ran through the Colonel’s mind, and some of it was reflected in his eyes. Mary, it was clear, understood something of his expression.

 

‘Can you get away from him?’ the Colonel said, with a note of pleading in his voice.

 

Without looking at the soldier whose arm lay so heavily over her shoulders, Mary answered something. What she said it was impossible to hear in the general hubbub. Seeing her pale lips move, and in agony at not hearing what she was saying, the Colonel called to her to repeat her sentence.

 

At that moment the duty siren sounded.

 

The uproar redoubled. Military police came pouring into the mess, pushing and kicking the drunks on to their feet and marching them out of the door.

 

Hopelessly, the Colonel rose to his feet. Leaning across the table and touching Mary’s hand, he said, ‘I must see you again and speak to you. If I survive this mission I will be here tomorrow night. Will you meet me?’

 

A fleeting smile.

 

‘I’ll be here,’ she said.

 

Hope flooded into him. Love, gratitude, all the secret springs of his nature poured forth into his veins. Then he turned towards the doors.

 

Just outside, a tube truck was waiting. The Special Wing staggered or was pushed into it. When all were accounted for, the doors closed and the tube moved off, snoring into the tunnel on an upward gradient.

 

It stopped again at Medical Bay, where orderlies with alco­holometers awaited them. Anyone who flipped the needle was instantly given an anti-toxic drug. The Colonel, for all that he had drunk little, had to submit to an injection. The alcohol in his blood was neutralized almost at once. Within five minutes, everyone in the room was stone cold sober again. To wage war in its present form would not have been possible without drugs.

 

The party, quieter now and with set faces, climbed back into the tube. It rose on an ascending spiral of tunnel, depositing them next at Briefing. They were now near the surface.

 

Accompanied by a few under-officers and N.C.O.s, the Colonel entered Information Briefing. The rest of his men— or those picked for this particular mission—went to Morale Briefing. Here, film and television would prepare them by direct and subliminal means for the hazards to come.

 

The Colonel and his party faced a brigadier who began speaking as soon as they sat down.

 

‘We have something fresh for you today. The enemy is try­ing a new move, and we have a new move to counteract it. The six of you will take only eighteen men with you on this mission. You will be lightly armed, and your safety will depend entirely on the element of surprise. When I tell you that if all goes well we expect to have you back here in ten hours, I do not want you to forget that those ten hours may vitally affect the whole outcome of the war.’

 

He went on to describe their objective. The picture was simple and clear as it built up in the Colonel’s mind. He dis­carded all details but the key ones. Half-way round the world, the enemy was gathered in some strength in a forest. In the middle of the forest was an old circular wooden building five stories high. On the top story of this building, looking over the treetops, was a control-room from which fleets of missiles could be launched.

 

The control-room was also a weather station, and it was for this reason it had been more convenient to situate it above ground. When the right weather prevailed over enemy terri­tory, the missiles would be launched. They contained bacteria.

 

‘We stand to have a major plague on our hands if this set-up is not put out of action at once,’ the Brigadier said. ‘Another force has been given the task of wiping out the launching site, but it’s underground and difficult to locate. First we must put the control-room out of action, and that is your job.

 

‘An anti-cyclone is building up over us now. Reports show that conditions should be ideal for an enemy launching in ten to twelve hours. We have to kill them before that.’

 

He then described the forces to be met with in the forest. They were heavy, but badly deployed as yet. Only the paths through the forest were defended, since vehicular attack through the trees was impossible.

 

This is where you and your men come in, Colonel. Our laboratories, bless ‘em, have just turned up with a new won­der drug called Fast-Plus. As far as I can understand, it’s a development of the old pep pills. Unfortunately it’s still rather in the experimental stage, but desperate situations call for desperate remedies....’

 

* * * *

 

At last the briefing was over, and the officers were joined by the men who had been selected to accompany them. The twenty-four of them then marched to an armoury, where they were equipped with special weapons and combat suits. Then they took one of the big elevators to Above.

 

On the surface it was still night. In a diesel truck they rode over to a landing strip, ventilator shafts and ruins of an old surface town making no more than vague smudges in the darkness that encompassed them. A plane awaited them. In ten minutes they were all aboard and strapped into position.

 

A high-ranking medical man entered. In a pouch strapped to his belt he carried the supply of Fast-Plus. This he would administer when they reached the enemy forest; now, he had a preparatory tranquillizer for them which would render the Fast-Plus more effective later. He administered this tranquil­lizer to them orally just before they took off.

 

The plane moved upwards with a sickening bound. Twenty-four men subsided into a drugged coma as they hurtled into the stratosphere, as they reached the margins of space, as they glittered in sunlight before turning to fall back like a stone towards Earth. Below them, out of the bowl of night, the enemy forest swam.

 

Under double parachutes, descending vertically, they braked and landed in an acre of bracken beneath the shadow of the first trees. The sedation period ended as the hatch swung open,

 

‘Let’s have you outside quietly, men,’ the Colonel said.

 

He checked his chronometer with the pilot’s before leaving. It was 0622 hours, with dawn in the offing and a chill breeze irritating the grass.

 

The medico came round with the Fast-Plus, which was made into boomerang-shaped capsules that fitted against the bottom teeth, under the tongue.

 

‘Don’t bite on them until the Colonel gives the word,’ he said. ‘And remember, don’t worry about yourselves. Just get back to your plane and we’ll take care of the after-effects.’

 

‘Famous last words,’ someone muttered.

 

The medico hurried back to his plane. It would be off as soon as they were gone; the special wing had to rendezvous with another one elsewhere when the mission was over. Fast-Plus pills in their mouths, the party set off for the trees in single file. Almost at once, a heavy gun opened fire.

 

‘Keep your heads down. It’s after the plane, not us,’ the Colonel said. The gun’s jerky bursts suggested it was radar-controlled and having trouble from the plane’s baffle equip­ment. He dismissed it from his mind. They would have worries of their own in a moment.

 

The worries came sooner than he had expected. A strobo-light came on, its nervous blink fluttering across the clearing, washing everything in its path with white. At the same time, the Colonel’s helmet beeped, telling him a radio eye had spotted him.

 

‘Down flat!’ he roared.

 

The air crackled with death as they flung themselves down. On their bellies they crawled into a hollow.

 

‘We’ll split into our five groups now,’ the Colonel said. ‘One and two to my left, four and five to my right. Seventy seconds from now on I’ll blow my whistle; crunch your pills then and be off. Good luck. Move.’

 

Twenty men moved. Four stayed with the Colonel. Ignoring the racket in the clearing, he watched the smallest hand on his chronometer, his whistle in his left fist. As he had hoped, the noise had died as he blew his blast. He crunched his capsule and rose, the four men beside him.

 

They ran for the Wood. They were among the trees.

 

The other four groups of five were among the trees also. Three of them were decoy groups. Only one of the other groups, number four, was actually due to reach the round building, approaching by a different route from the Colonel’s.

 

As they entered the forest, the drug took effect. A slight dizziness seized the Colonel, a singing started in his ears. Against this minor irritation, a vast comfort swept through his limbs. He began to breathe more rapidly, and then to think and move more rapidly. His whole metabolism was accelerat­ing.

 

Alarm filled him momentarily, although he had been primed on what to expect. The alarm came from some deep and un-plumbed personal core in him, a place that resented this tampering with its personal rhythm. Coupled with it came a vivid picture of Mary’s face, as if the Colonel by submitting to this drug was somehow defiling her. Then the image and the alarm were gone, leaving the Colonel clear and superb.

 

Now he was sprinting, his men beside him. They flicked round dense bush, leaving the clearing behind. A searchlight burst into life, sweeping its narrow beam among the tree trunks in a confusing pattern of light and shade. As it caught group three, the Colonel shot it out.

 

He had acted fast, hardly realizing he was firing. The guns they carried had special light-touch trigger actions to respond to their new tempo.

 

A burst of firing answered his shot, but it fell behind them. They were moving faster, already breaking records.

 

They wove fast among the trees. Dawn gave them light to see by. Opposition, as briefing had forecast, was scattered. Mainly they ran uninterruptedly. They passed caravans, camouflaged vehicles, tanks, tents, some containing sleeping men. All these they skirted. Anything moving they shot. A 50 per cent acceleration of perception and motion turned them into supermen.

 

Absolute calm ruled in the Colonel’s mind. He moved like a deadly machine. Sight and sound came through with ultra-clarity. He seemed to observe movement before it began. Noise played round him. A world of noise surrounded him.

 

He heard the rapid hammer of his heart, his breathing, the breathing of his fellows, the rustle of their limbs inside their clothes. He heard the crackle of twigs beneath their feet, faint shouts in the forest, distant shots—presumably marking the whereabouts of another group. He seemed to hear everything in the world.

 

They covered the first mile in five minutes, the second in under four. Occasionally the Colonel glanced at his wrist compass, but a mystic sense seemed to keep him on course.

 

When an unexpected burst of firing from a flank killed one of the group, the other four raced on without pause. It was as if they could never stop running.

 

The second mile was easy, and most of the third. Normally, the enemy was prepared for any eventuality: but that did not include a handful of men running. The idea was too laughable to be entertained. The Colonel’s group got through only because it was impossible.

 

Now they were almost at destination. Some sort of warning of their approach had been given. The trees were spaced more widely, anti-tank guns were being rolled up, machine-gun posts manned. Strengthening, the light began to favour the enemy.

 

‘Scatter!’ the Colonel shouted, as a gun barked ahead. His voice sounded curiously high in his own ears.

 

His men swerved apart, keeping each other in sight. They were moving like shadows now, limbs flickering, brains alight. They ran. They did not fire.

 

The machine-gun posts opened up. Missing four phantoms, they kept up their chatter in preparation for a main body of men who never arrived. The phantoms plunged on, tormented most by the noise, which bit like acid into their ear-drums.

 

Again the phantoms grouped in a last dash. Through the trees loomed a round wooden building. They were there!

 

The four fired together as a section of the enemy burst from a nearby hut. They shot a machine-gunner dead as he swung his barrel at them. They hurled grenades into a sandbagged strong point. Then they were in the control post.

 

It was as briefing had described it. The Colonel leading, the four bounded up the creaking spiral stair. Doors burst open as they mounted. But the enemy moved with a curious sloth and died without firing a shot. In three seconds flat they were at the top of the building.

 

Breathing rapidly, the Colonel flung open a door, the only door on this story.

 

This was the weather- and control-room.

 

Apparatus had been piled up in disorderly fashion, bearing witness to the fact that the enemy had only moved in here a comparatively few hours ago. But here was no mistaking the big weather charts on the walls—or the control console in the centre of the room. Right here was the point from which the bacteria-carrying missiles took their ultimate orders.

 

Several of the enemy were in the room. The firing nearby had alarmed them. One spoke into a phone, while except for one other the rest stared out of the windows anxiously. The one other sat at the firing console. He saw the Colonel first.

 

Astonishment and fear came on to his face, slackening the muscles there, dropping his mouth open. He slid round in his seat, lifting his hand at the same time to reach out for the press buttons. To the Colonel, he appeared to be moving in ultra-slow-motion, just as in ultra-slow-motion the other occupants of the room were turning to face their enemy.

 

Emitting a high squeal like a bat’s the Colonel twitched his right index finger slightly. He saw the bullet speed home to its mark. Raising his hands to his chest, the push-button man toppled off his stool and fell beside the console.

 

One of the Colonel’s men tossed an incendiary grenade into the room. They were running back down the spiral stairs as it roared into life. Again doors burst open on them, again they fired without thought. The grenade thrower squealed and plunged head first down the stairs. His three companions ran past him, out into the wood.

 

Setting his new course, the Colonel led his two men towards their rendezvous. This was the easiest part of their mission; they came on the scattered enemy from an unexpected quarter and were gone before he realized it. Behind them, a wooden building blazed.

 

They had four miles to go this way. After the first mile, the maximum effect of the drug began to wear off. The Colonel was aware that the abnormal clarity of his brain was changing into deadness. He ran on.

 

Sunshine broke through in splinters on to the carpet of the forest. Each fragment was incredibly sharp and memorable. Each noise underfoot was unforgettable. A slight breeze in the treetops was a protracted bellow as of an ocean breaking on rock. His own breathing was an adamantine clamour for air. He heard his bones click-click-click in their sockets, his muscles and sinews swishing in the gravies of their blood.

 

At the end of the third mile, one of the Colonel’s two men collapsed without warning. His face was black, and he hit the ground with the sound of a felled tree, utterly burnt out. The others never paused.

 

The Colonel and his fellow reached the rendezvous. They lay twitching in a ditch until the plane came for them. By then there were twelve twitching men to carry away, all that was left of the original party. Two medical orderlies hustled them rapidly into bunks, sinking needles into their arms to stop then-twitching.

 

* * * *

 

Seemingly without interval, it was twelve hours later.

 

Again the Colonel sat in the mess. Despite the fatigue in his limbs, he had willed himself to come here. He had a date with Mary.

 

The junketing was getting into full swing about him, the nightly tide of debauchery and drunkenness was rising. Many of these men, like the Colonel himself, had faced death during the day; many more would be facing it tomorrow. Their duty was only to survive: their health was kept in capsules.

 

The Colonel sat at the end of one long table, close to the wall, keeping an empty chair next to him as the room filled. His ears echoed and ached with the noise about him. Wearily, he looked about for Mary.

 

Only after half an hour had passed did he feel the first twinge of apprehension. He did not know her real name. The events of the day, the rigours of the mission, had obliterated the memory of her face. She had smiled, yes. She had looked ordinary enough, yes. No ... he knew not a thing about her except the hope she had stirred in him.

 

An hour passed, and still the chair was empty beside him. He sat on and on, submerged in noise. Probably she was in bed with the drunk who had had his arm round her yesterday. Boom, boom, boom went the meaningless din, and the chair remained empty beside him.

 

It was after two in the morning. The mess was emptying again. The symbolism of the chair hit the Colonel suddenly. Mary would not come. She would never come. He was just a soldier; there would be an empty chair beside him all his life. No Mary would ever come. Bitterly he pressed his face into his hands, trying to bury himself in those hard palms.

 

* * * *

 

This was Sergeant Taylor’s dream, and it woke him crying in his hospital bed.

 

He wept and shuddered until the shouts of men in nearby beds brought him back to reality. Then he lay back and mar­velled about his dream, ignoring the pain of his shattered ear-drums.

 

The dream was a wonderful mixture of reality and super-reality. Every detail concerning the raid had been accurately reconstructed. Just like that, he had led his men to success a very few hours ago. The Fast-Plus pills had behaved in the dream as in real life.

 

Only in two details had Sergeant Taylor’s dream trans­cended reality-----

 

‘Hell, what the hell was you dreaming about?’ asked the fellow in the next bed. ‘Some dame stand you up or some­thing?’

 

Sergeant Taylor nodded vaguely, seeing the man’s lips move. Well, they had said there might be after-effects. Perhaps even now someone was inventing a drug to grow you new ear­drums...

 

Only in two details had his dream transcended reality.

 

He had never seen or consciously looked for any Mary. Yet the authority of the dream was such that he knew that through all the thoughtless debauchery of his life a Mary was what he had been seeking. He knew, too, the dream predicted correctly: given his type of life, given the conditions in the underground barracks, there would never be a Mary for him. Women there were, but not women like Mary.

 

The other detail fitted with the first one—-

 

‘Or maybe the way you was squealing you was Above, play­ing soldiers again, huh?’ suggested the fellow in the next bed.

 

Sergeant Taylor smiled meaninglessly and nodded at the moving lips. He was in a world of his own at present; and he liked it.

 

Yes, the other detail fitted with the first. In his dream he had promoted himself to colonel. It could be a typical piece of oneiric self-aggrandizement: but more likely it was something deeper than that, another slice of prediction matching the first.

 

Sergeant Taylor was a soldier. He had been a soldier for a long time, but now he was realizing it all through. That made him soldier-plus. Mary was the softer side of his life, the unfulfilled, the empty chair side; now it was ruled out of being, so that he could only grow harder, tougher, more bitter, more callous. He was going to make a splendid soldier.

 

No love—but bags of promotion!

 

Sergeant Taylor saw it all now, clear as a splinter of sun­shine. Shakily, he started to laugh, so that the man in the next bed stared at him again.

 

Heck, they should be able to think up some really bizarre missions for a stone-deaf man. . . .