The Suicide Squad

By John Sebastian Alexander

Pound for pound, Japanese Kamikaze pilots were the most efficient and deadly weapons of World War II. They achieved maximum effect with minimum expense-and were virtually impossible to defend against. The underlying theory is that you can blow up almost anything, assassinate almost anybody, commit practically any act of violence or terrorism as long as you don't give a damn about the consequences to yourself. This is the basic premise of The Suicide Squad, a psychological thriller set in the closing years of the Cold War.

The U.S. Army has applied state-of-the-art profiling to the recruitment of suitable Kamikaze operatives: men who want to die anyway; men who will, without therapeutic intervention, almost certainly kill themselves; men who do not resist-nay, who actually embrace-the idea of voluntarily sacrificing themselves for the greater common good. Not only do they manage to get the job done, but when they conveniently get themselves killed in the process or gratefully swallow their cyanide capsules afterward, there are no internal security leaks, no loose lips that can sink ships; you don't even have to give them their final paychecks.

The fun begins when an especially well-qualified Suicide Squad volunteer, Pvt. Luchars, changes his mind and decides he doesn't want to die after all. But "gifts have been given, hostages exchanged," and there's no turning back. Luchars discovers his real struggle is not with the outside world, but with his own psyche, and he must use all his skills to battle to reverse the suicidal spiral and climb back up into the light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 9, 2003
• ISBN: 9781469772875

John Sebastian Alexander

Author does not want to have a biography for this book.

Book preview

The Suicide Squad

John Sebastian Alexander

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

The Suicide Squad

Copyright © 2003, 2006 by John Sebastian Alexander

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-29966-9

ISBN: 978-1-4697-7287-5 (eBook)

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

CHAPTER XLIV

CHAPTER XLV

CHAPTER XLVI

CHAPTER XLVII

CHAPTER XLVIII

CHAPTER IL

CHAPTER L

This book is dedicated to those who made it possible—most of whom are long since dead: to composers, philosophers, scientists, novelists, poets, adventurers, playwrights, with the odd general or two thrown in for good measure; to smashed illusions and broken dreams; to dead gods; to fallible sons and fallible fathers.

Just about everything I write now—Newboy folded his glass in both hands—I can be sure will be published. It makes me very careful of what I put down. How careful are you?

—Dhalgren

CHAPTER I  

Colonel Zuberer always found a visit to Major Wyngaard’s inner-office sanctum an educational experience. Not necessarily pleasant, not necessarily satisfactory or productive, but definitely always interesting. There was the man himself, of course, which was enough to make even an empty room a thing of fascination. But there were also his personal possessions. For this was the one place remaining that Zuberer knew of where it was still possible to see just a little bit of the private Dr. Wyngaard. This was not where he met with his patients—or rather, his victims—but where he worked and researched. Where the two of them had originally devised their organization, and now rattled their plots and plans.

The furniture was Wyngaard’s own, expensive and austerely luxurious. The desk was a massive oaken affair and the polished mahogany bookshelves that covered one complete wall accommodated better than a thousand books, more than a third of them on psychology and psychotherapy. There were several fairly valuable first and second editions of some of the more famous psychology classics, a constant influx of the most recent publications, and 37 full-blown treatises on suicide (Zuberer had counted them). In fact, the books on psychology were outnumbered only by the books on military history and strategy.

I don’t get it. What’s the connection? Colonel Zuberer had once asked.

Wyngaard had shrugged. What’s the difference? He’d then gone on to quote a famous passage from Anne Frank’s World War II diary: I still believe that deep down human beings are good at heart. Followed by what he said should have become an equally famous quote about it from Anne’s posthumous stepsister, Eva Schloss, one of the few survivors of Birkenau Concentration Camp: I cannot help remembering that Anne wrote this before she experienced Auschwitz and Belsen.

There were no windows in Major Wyngaard’s office, but on the walls hung three extraordinary and, to Zuberer’s mind, perplexing abstract paintings (oh, no—Wyngaard would never put up anything identifiable and direct—not he). There was also an ornament, another abstract, on the desk. It was a curious sort of thing, some kind of Canadian Eskimo carving his wife, Janice, had given him years back, long before they were married. Even now Wyngaard would occasionally pick it up and fondle it absently while he and Zuberer talked.

Sitting next to the carving was a framed photograph (in the place of honor—no doubt) of Wyngaard and Janice at a ski resort. They were standing in the snow holding skis and poles. Wyngaard had one arm around Janice’s shoulders and she was leaning her head against him affectionately. They were both smiling radiantly. It was on this skiing vacation that Wyngaard had asked her to marry him. (The man could at least have the decency to put the picture away out of sight, thought Zuberer indignantly. Any other man who’d walked out on his wife of ten years for no apparent reason without so much as a backward glance would—but, oh, no—not he, not Wyngaard. Swinegaard!)

It was after regular hours so the anteroom was deserted. Zuberer strode through, carrying his briefcase, and entered the inner office without knocking—not that he ever knocked, or gave the poor clerk, Sergeant Somers, a chance to alert his master. Wyngaard was seated, as usual, at the computer console.

He was a handsome man; there was no denying it. He was of medium height and build, but in superb physical condition and extremely strong. (It was all muscle.) He had straight, dark blond hair and a close-clipped moustache, and his profile was positively striking. His face was too narrow for beauty, but you forgot about that completely the second he looked at you, for when this man looked at you, he saw.It seemed almost as though his eyes were perpetually narrowed—analyzing, evaluating, always judging; leaving no real clue as to what he was actually thinking except it probably wasn’t good—and you would be well advised to watch your step around him. Even now, after all the time they’d spent together and despite the difference in their age and rank, Zuberer still felt it. Those eyes…glacier blue, hard, cold, usually contemptuous, and far, far too intelligent. But then, he supposed, they should be: the man hadn’t spent two years at West Point and been awarded a Ph.D. in psychology summa cum laude by Yale University for nothing, you know.

But the eyes…fearless, pitiless, merciless. What civilian in his right mind would ever trust those eyes? For that matter, what civilian even in his wrong mind would ever trust them? No wonder Wyngaard had left private practice and accepted a commission in the Army—where people didn’t have any choice about whom they had to trust. They were the eyes, Zuberer had long ago decided, of a hanging judge or executioner, or cold-blooded murderer—who would just as soon kill you as look at you. But then, that’s what Wyngaard was, wasn’t he?—a cold-blooded, legalized murderer. That’s what we both are, Zuberer thought grimly.

But even though the two of them had hashed it out time and time again, battled through to the inescapable strategic necessity of the voluntary self-sacrifice of a willing few for the greater good of the many…. Even so, sometimes when Zuberer thought about the wholly mercenary, exploitative, monstrous nature of their work (if the men were willing it could only have been because Wyngaard had expertly manipulated them into being so), Zuberer, ordinarily the most rock-hard and imperturbable of professional soldiers (he’d sent plenty of men to their deaths in his time, or rather, led them; that was more his style)…. Even so, the iron Zuberer would be so morally revolted he would actually feel sick to his stomach and wish vehemently that for once Wyngaard would be the one not to return from a mission. Good riddance and God damn his soul to hell! And after all, it would only have been a matter two weeks ago of meekly acquiescing when the submarine captain had declared that Colonel Zuberer’s long-overdue men were almost certainly dead and ordered full ahead.

Zuberer thought back to the endless, agonizing hours waiting in the tiny diving chamber of the small Navy Barracuda Strike sub for Major Wyngaard and the operative to return. Although none of the operatives had ever come back to their extraction points, elaborate plans for escape routes were always devised, and Wyngaard was always waiting for them in person to escort them on the last leg of the journey home, even at the risk of his own life. He had promised the men he would be there waiting and he was always there. In fact, Zuberer had never known him not to keep his word about anything—except his marriage vows.

Goddamnit, man! Zuberer had thought. Don’t you realize I love you as if you were my own son? That I care desperately and in the most personal way what happens to you. That I could no more leave this hellhole of a diving chamber than the moon can leave its orbit. That I would have bribed or blackmailed the Captain—or even threatened to shoot him if necessary—to gain you the extra time. That I will always be waiting for you to return from your godawful missions, just as you wait for your men. That I will be waiting on that horrible day when you have the unmitigated gall not to return. Impossibly, he’d felt tears welling up in his eyes at the thought.

I hate you for that! Zuberer had thought venomously. I hate you precisely because I have no choice but to admire and love you. And…because of what we have both become, together, pushing each other along. I hate in you what I most hate in myself—but cannot avoid, escape, or deny. If you’ve said it once, you’ve said it a thousand times: Man’s Moral Law is simply no match for Natural Law. Once a fact is amply attested you are to accept it, no matter how ugly it is, no matter how much you wish it wasn’t so, no matter how violently it collides with what you have previously thought and would still prefer to think.

You thought I didn’t recognize that quote, didn’t you? Zuberer had thought. You arrogant, conceited snob! You think I don’t pay any attention to your philosophical pronouncements, that they don’t even go in one ear and out the other, that they just bounce off the eardrum, don’t you?—you bloody son-of-a-bitch! Well, I do, and they don’t. I wish to God they did, but they don’t.

So! Have you finally succeeded in psychoanalyzing the computer’s personality? Zuberer asked, by way of announcing himself. Wyngaard turned and glared at him. Zuberer continued:

My, my. Testy today, aren’t we? You know, I really think we ought to let this mechanical marvel of yours take the MMPI or at least a couple of the aptitude tests. Might be able to find something useful for it to do around here, such as sweeping hallways or sharpening pencils. All of which was patently inane, since Wyngaard knew perfectly well Zuberer was at least as, if not more, skillful on a terminal keyboard than himself. Oh, but I see, you’re…losing at chess again.

Zuberer studied the chessboard on the screen for all of fifteen seconds, then recommended P–K5, Thus freeing the center for your heavy artillery and being a nuisance all at the same time. Zuberer excelled at position play and would occasionally dazzle the younger men at the Officers’ Club by taking on several opponents at once. The tall, gray-haired, distinguished-looking Zuberer would move from board to board, usually tarrying no more than 30 or 40 seconds, and the other players would have the time it took him to complete the circuit and come back around to them in which to make their moves. Zuberer would almost invariably beat them all. Only he wouldn’t just beat them politely, he’d usually end up smearing them all over their respective boards. As Grandmaster Chernev had said (and Zuberer was fond of quoting): In chess you may hit a man when he’s down.

So what do you think of this Private Luchars I told you about this morning? Zuberer asked.

Wyngaard glared a little more narrowly—if that was possible—and made a wild-boar noise.

Hardly a proper way to answer a question from a superior officer. However, I take it that means ‘not much.’ Which surprises me, George, because I would have thought this Luchars fellow was right up your alley. Here I go to all the trouble of digging up a nice, juicy neurotic—if not psychotic—for you, and all you do is snort. That’s gratitude for you!

Wyngaard didn’t bother to look up from the computer screen. Grenade jumpers are typically unstable, he said. You know that. Besides, he’s enlisted, and you also know what I think about using enlisted men. It’s outside the protocol.

Oh, yes, my goodness, I forgot. Outside the protocol. Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to do that, would we!

No,sir,we wouldn’t,snapped Wyngaard,glowering at Zuberer.I would remind you that, due in large part to strict adherence to this selection protocol, which you seem to regard so lightly, I’ve been able to deliver to you no fewer than fourteen trained operatives over the past eleven months, all of whom accomplished their objectives successfully and either conveniently managed to get themselves killed in the process or dutifully swallowed their cyanide capsules. No internal security leaks, no loose, psychotic lips to sink ships; we didn’t even have to give them their final paychecks. Of course, maybe I’ve misread you and deep down you don’t really want to be promoted to General. Fine. Start choosing the operatives yourself and you won’t have to worry about it.

But Zuberer refused to be baited; the chessmaster, laying his trap, patiently biding his time. He sat down on the edge of the desk and swung a leg. "Oh, I admit your precious protocol does have a certain proven utility, but no doubt at the cost of being overly conservative and exclusionary. A bit like the surgeon who never opens up anyone who doesn’t turn out to have full-blown acute appendicitis—and to hell with the cases he doesn’t manage to identify before they drop dead.

"It’s easy to never miss if you never shoot at any fish that aren’t already in a barrel, comatose. But demand has always outstripped supply and the problem is only going to become worse, precisely because of our successes. The brass have had a tantalizing taste of it now and they’re going to want more. That I can assure you. Who’s to say what would have happened if the Japanese had instigated their Kamikaze policy on a wide scale at the beginning of World War II?

As for this Private Luchars, let’s just say I have a hunch, an…intuitive premonition—call it a revelation from God—that you’ll find this one is not quite your ordinary, run-o’-the-mill high-school dropout—look, George, if you don’t do something to relieve the congestion in the center of the chessboard, your major pieces are going to remain hopelessly in each other’s way. You should develop your pieces, yes, but there’s no need to run it into the ground. Why, they’re practically screaming out for…oh, ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT, by all means, have it your own way! Far be it from me to make a simple, tactical suggestion. After all, I’m only the Base Chess Champion. What do I know? Oh, stop pouting. You’re never going to learn to beat me simply by playing against this damned computer. I tell you, this computer does not know everything, even about chess. You need to study the literature and play through the masters’ games—and listen to my advice once in a while. Now about this Luchars—

What about him? Wyngaard asked belligerently; he was on his own turf now. He quickly pressed a few keys and the chessboard on the video display was replaced with Army data on Recruit Private Jonathan D. Luchars.

At your request, Colonel Zuberer, Wyngaard said icily, I studied his dossier and he looks extraordinarily ordinary to me. Test results, records, jobs. His performance in boot camp so far has been consistently way below average. He’s slow on the obstacle course, sloppy on inspections; has difficulty understanding and carrying out even the simplest sets of instructions; just can’t seem to get the hang of marching. He’s a regular Gomer Pyle. I’m inclined to think he’s telling the truth, that he did just fall on that stupid grenade. Take a look at the rifle-range scores. The guy’s a real zero. A nothing. A ding-dong. I don’t care how suicidal he is. I can’t use them when they’re this dumb. Hell, I’d be suicidal, too, if I were mentally retarded.

Wyngaard reverted back to the chess game. It was to be observed that he moved P–K5. Now, is there anything else? I am off duty, in case you weren’t aware. Sir.

"Have yourself a big evening planned? Do you have a DATE?—after all, it’s Friday night; there’s no school tomorrow. Or were you planning to stay here all night and sulk? Or perhaps you were going to go over and consume some of the miserable food at the commissary before repairing to that equally miserable motel room you call home and drinking yourself into oblivion. Ah—you thought I didn’t know about that, didn’t you? Well, if you keep it up, pretty soon the whole goddamned base is going to know about it because it’s going to show up on your stomach no matter how many silly sit-ups you do. Oh, and I know all about those, too. I had Whatley spy on you the other day in the gym. Good man, Whatley. He counted two hundred and two. George, why two hundred and two?….

But what I was going to say is I would invite you to the house for dinner—Elizabeth’s working her magic on a tender, succulent, $5.79-per-pound London broil—damned if the price of beef hasn’t gone up again—oh, but doesn’t it just make your mouth water?…. But what I was going to say is I would invite you to dinner, except your wife is going to be there—you remember her—so I’m sure there’s no earthly point in my wasting my breath!

Wyngaard cocked an eyebrow and said patronizingly, Do you feel better now?

No, thought Zuberer morosely, but I’m going to in just a few minutes, after I put you firmly in your place once and for all. God bless you, Private Luchars, whoever—and whatever—you are. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul when Wyngaard gets his fangs into you.

It wasn’t that often that Zuberer had the pleasure of pulling a first-class coup on Wyngaard, and he wanted to savor every moment of it, every last painful nuance of expression. He sat down on the deliciously plush armchair across from the desk so he would be able to have a front-on view of Wyngaard’s face as he read through the papers Zuberer was about to hand him. Including Luchars’ rifle-range targets. (It was truly considerate of Wyngaard to mention those specifically—and walk right into what now became the bonus dimension of Zuberer’s little trap. It was true in chess, it was true in life: you move your men out into strong positions in the center and combinations seem to spring up magically all by themselves, without any conscious design on your part. But then that was what position play was all about—thus spake Zuberathustra.)

Zuberer slapped the folder down on the desk and said, in an unmistakably commanding-officer tone: I want you to read through—not your precious computer record—but the actual paper file on this Luchars person and tell me what you find wrong with it.

Wyngaard put the computer on standby with a show of exaggerated reluctance (he could be such a stubborn, hardheaded child at times! Zuberer thought) and opened up the folder. After several minutes he said, ‘Bootlicking’? Was that what you wanted me to catch? Some moronic clown’s idea of a practical joke?

Bearing in mind, of course, Zuberer said, that this ‘moronic clown’ of yours did jump—not fall, but jump—on top of what he thought was—and should by all rights have been—a live explosive. But that wasn’t it—although I do find the bootlicking rather amusing myself, especially coming from someone who’s so dreadfully clumsy and inept he practically can’t walk without tripping over himself, and who’s so appallingly feebleminded he got such pathetically low scores on all the intelligence and aptitude tests. Exactly 50%, the bare minimum grade, on every last one of them. Every last one. Does that not…appeal to your imagination?

No! Wyngaard said shortly. But it obviously appeals to yours. And you just as obviously have something inordinately clever up your sleeve. I don’t want to spoil your fun, but I’m just not in the mood for it tonight. So if it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition to ask you to come to the point of all this….

I’ll give you a hint. Examine the rifle-range target scans carefully.

With his elbow propped up on the desk top, Wyngaard lethargically poked through the target-sheet images with a couple of limp finger tips. So?

Why, I’m surprised at you, George. I would have thought a man with your education…. Look at that one. Now what does that remind you of?

Have you taken up Rorschach Bullet Holes?

No, George. And now for the payoff: I’ve taken up stars.

I beg your pardon?

"Stars. Stars—you know, as in heavenly bodies, as in ‘Twinkle, twinkle little—.’ Private Luchars has been shooting out constellations of the nighttime sky. See? I told you your computer didn’t know everything. I’ve looked them up in an astronomy book. That one’s…Orion. This is Pegasus. Cassiopeia. Gemini. Right on the money, too. The man’s an excellent shot and yet the whole platoon has him pegged as a pansy.

The entire set of his registration papers is perfectly ludicrous: didn’t finish high school, never held a decent job; no money, no family, no credentials. Nothing except outstandingly good health. A real nobody, right? In a pig’s eye!" Ho ho!—Wyngaard was starting to perk up and get the old gleam in his eye. Zuberer continued:

Now this Luchars—if that’s really his name—may have burned all his bridges behind him by giving us his impersonation of an IQ of 102, but he did leave himself an inflatable rubber boat—in the form of those target sheets—and I’m going to guess, an outboard motor to go with it—in the form of his original test scores. Now, of course, that may not have been his conscious intention; maybe he was just amusing himself at the Army’s expense—that’s your department; but those consistent 50%’s are simply too good to be true….

He didn’t even have to finish. Wyngaard was on his feet in a flash and over at his wall of filing cabinets. Within 60 seconds he’d located the manual score sheets for the Army’s entrance examinations and was back at the desk fitting the first one on Luchars’ answer sheet. Zuberer had already done this so he knew exactly what Wyngaard would find: that the black pencil marks appeared under exactly every other hole.

Methodical bastard, isn’t he? Zuberer mused softly. Oh, this was going to be a day to remember. It had seen the death of Obiwan, it would soon see the end of the rebellion. Pretty neat trick, eh?—answering every other question correctly, without fail. I doubt I would have been able to pull it off.

Wyngaard’s expression indicated he doubted it, too. But he said nothing and quickly placed the other score sheets over their corresponding test papers. On every single one of them, exactly every other answer was correct.

Like I said, Zuberer preened, methodical, isn’t he?

Wyngaard grunted his assent (which was probably as close as he would ever come, thought Zuberer, to conceding victory) and continued to mull over the papers.

Am I to take it you’re now interested in him? Zuberer asked, unable to dissemble his ecstasy. But Wyngaard only grunted again; he was clearly preoccupied and deep in thought. Then his eyelids tightened.

What is it? Zuberer asked, now fully alert, his ecstasy forgotten.

Wyngaard gave voice to his thoughts, picking up in mid-sentence: …But why go to the bother of filling in some of the wrong answers?….

I don’t understand.

Our friend here—(ho ho ho, so it was our friend now, was it?)—has answered half of the questions correctly, right? That’s all he wanted to get credit for. That’s all he wanted the scanner to read. The easy thing to do would simply be to leave the rest of the answer boxes blank. But instead, he’s filled most of them in. But it can’t have just been done randomly—

Oh, I see!—because none of those answers is correct. And if he’d just gone through and marked them at random, an average of 25% of those answers would have been the right ones. And that would have messed up his pretty little pattern of every other one. So he had to deliberately avoid the correct answers, which means…. George, are you thinking what I’m thinking?

That he was smart enough to answer almost all of the questions correctly? They observed a moment of silence while they digested this piece of information. Nathan, did you know about this—the other half of the answers, I mean?

Zuberer shook his head. He’d been so amazed it had never occurred to him to look beyond the initial discovery of the 50%’s.

Wyngaard handed Zuberer half of the tests and the two of the them spent the next ten minutes going through all of the answer sheets, carefully marking off all the correct answers. When they finished, Wyngaard spent a few minutes going through all the tests and making a few computations on a calculator. When he finally spoke, it was with an expression on his face that was, on him, the closest to wonderment and awe Zuberer had ever seen.

Do you have any idea what this means? He’s answered 95% or more of all the questions on every test, and in two cases, the pure verbal and mathematical, almost 100% of the questions. But those two and a few of the AFQT and ASVAB subtests are time-pressure tests. They’re not designed for people to be able to finish them. Most recruits answer less than 80% of those questions and only get about 75% of their answers right. Luchars has answered 95% or more of the questions and gotten 100% of his answers right—or wrong where he wanted them to be wrong. And he didn’t skip any. After doing every other one, he appears to have gone back through them from top to bottom and incorrectly answered as many of the remaining ones as he had time for. Only one enlisted recruit in 450 is able to answer all of the questions and get a perfect score on even a single test. And the percentage of officer candidates isn’t much higher. Of course, nobody’s ever gotten all of the questions on all of the tests right—

Which just goes to show that nobody with any brains would ever dream of voluntarily joining the Army.

Wyngaard gave him a withering look. That’s a very helpful comment, Nathan.

Maybe this Luchars fellow cheated. And just because he was able to mark a wrong answer on the half he got wrong doesn’t necessarily mean he knew the right answer. After all, he had a 75% chance of hitting a wrong answer at random. You may be giving him too much credit. Perhaps a few lucky guesses on some of the ‘wrong’ answers—

Only if you describe the proverbial monkey’s sitting down at a typewriter and accidentally batting out the Declaration of Independence as ‘luck,’ yes, Wyngaard retorted irritably. No, I think he not only left himself a rubber boat with an outboard motor, but he’s got himself a helicopter with a pilot stashed somewhere under a bush; that is, if he can’t fly the damned thing himself. And furthermore…. Wyngaard absently smoothed his moustache down with his fingers. My guess is he’s not only of a methodical turn of mind, but he doesn’t like waste. I don’t think he just avoided the right answers. That’s not methodical enough. And where’s the fun in it? What do you want to bet he’s got the rest of the answers ‘hidden’ in here somewhere?

Wyngaard frowned at the papers, now tugging at his moustache. Hmmm…. Nathan, I don’t want to alarm you, but this might just be a job for the computer.

But Wyngaard puzzled some more and then on impulse, shifted one of the score sheets over so it lay one space to the right—and fully three fourths of the rest of the answers were now accounted for. The A’s were in the B slots, the B’s were in the C slots, and the C’s were in the D slots. Wyngaard started to laugh.

What is it? Let me see, let me see! Zuberer demanded impatiently.

Wyngaard turned the papers around and slid them across the desk to Zuberer. He grinned and said:

That takes care of all the A, B, and C answers. And I’d be willing to bet any amount of money the D answers are all under the A slots. Wyngaard laughed some more. A very methodical turn of mind. He realigned the score sheet to adjust for the D answers and started checking them off.

Zuberer was a little bit shaken. Taking a bit of a chance, wasn’t he?—going for 50% across the board? I mean, one screw-up and bye-bye enlistment.

Wyngaard smiled. Mephistopheles would have smiled like that when he, too, was about to claim a soul. Get me everything. Every last damned thing you can get on him.

Oh, uh, Whatley’s been on it since Monday, Zuberer said, recovering some of his previous glee. The Army did somehow manage to function before you came along, you know—unbelievable as it may seem. Wyngaard might have been the one to latch onto the bit about the hidden answers, but Luchars was still Zuberer’s discovery. And the extra hidden answers only added to the significance of that discovery. Hmmmph!—Rorschach bullet holes, indeed! Wyngaard was really full of himself.

I told Whatley there was no particular hurry since the fellow will be laid up for a while in the infirmary. But he ought to have a fairly thorough preliminary report for you by Monday morning. But only Class VI, because I don’t think we want to tip our hand this early in the game. But I must say I’m rather looking forward to it myself. And here you were going to just write him off as a…what was it?—a dingbat, a ding-dong, a clown? It’s nice to know you’re fallible, George, at least once in a while. He glanced at his watch. Ooops, well, it’s getting late. I’ve got to be running along. Do have yourself a nice weekend, George, he smirked, as he packed up his briefcase. Then he stood up and walked jauntily towards the door.

As he opened it, he paused and turned slowly. Gently now (all his initial venom was gone—now that he’d won): Sure you won’t…change your mind about dinner tonight? You are—and always will be—very much welcome.

A look of pain involuntarily flashed out from Wyngaard’s eyes and he seemed to hesitate for the briefest instant. But then resolutely shook his head.

Any…message for Janice? Zuberer had seen the short spark of emotion and decided to risk this, even though he knew Wyngaard had refused to meet or even speak with his wife since the day he’d up and moved out and filed for divorce nine odd months ago. And even though Zuberer knew any message was like as not to be something on the order of Tell her the court date has been set and she’ll be hearing from my lawyer. Still, he kept hoping. The picture on the desk, the fact that Wyngaard did not appear to have started seeing anyone else; they had to mean something.

But Wyngaard had already recovered his customary caustic aplomb—with accrued interest: You can tell her not to wait up for me.

CHAPTER II  

Jonathan Luchars had given his bicycle a last lingering look, which would have been affectionate except he had lost, or more accurately, purged, all capacity for such emotion long ago.

There had been a time once when such an action as the abandoning of the handcrafted, 21-pound, $1300 touring cycle, his most precious possession, would have been impossibly painful. Not only impossible and painful, but unthinkable, reprehensible, absurd! But now it was easy. One simply left the bicycle leaning against a wall unattended for all of five minutes and it would disappear, as if by magic. Such was the state of the world.

Luchars sighed inaudibly, his face impassive. Viewed in the past tense—where, in his opinion, it properly belonged—his eccentric penchant for an inanimate piece of machinery was preposterous enough to be considered amusing. Bichael, he had called it, and Pet, and Petycle. He snorted mentally: Petycle—indeed! And he a grown man. He would have laughed if he were still capable of it. And yet, was it so terribly difficult to understand?

What little innate gregariousness and social instinct he still possessed had been withdrawn from humankind and bestowed upon what he considered to be a much more deserving object. God knows he had tried to love them, to give them every benefit of the doubt, every possible opportunity to prove themselves worthy of even a modicum of respect and admiration. But in the final analysis…?

He chuckled mirthlessly: in the final analysis he found himself savoring the immortal words of Rafael Sabatini in his novel, Captain Blood. Concerning Peter Blood, a 17th-century physician being marched to an unmerited death on the gallows, within earshot of the piercing screams of a woman in acutest agony, Sabatini had written:

It came to Mr. Blood, as he trudged forward under the laden apple trees on that fragrant, delicious July morning, that man—as he had long suspected—was the vilest work of God, and that only a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species that was best exterminated.

Darwin and the theory of evolution aside, Luchars thought it wonderfully well put. He particularly liked the apple trees.

Ridiculous! you say?—to squander perfectly good love, all the finest feelings and sensitivities, all the depths of human care and passion, on an insensate hunk of junk (which it must be admitted Bichael did truly resemble, camouflaged as it was for security reasons). But was there really that much difference between a bicycle, on the one hand, and a dog or cat or even human being, on the other? That the one was not internally motivated and the others more or less puffed around under their own steam—was it really all that important? That the one was constructed of molybdenum chrome while the others were carbon and saline based—so what?

But the humans (never mind the dogs and cats) have Free Will, you argue. Oh? Do they? Free Will, for instance, to pillage, plunder, and rape? To mug, molest, assault and battery? Or perhaps you meant, to torture, mutilate, and burn at the stake. To engage in slavery, to wage aggressive war, to build gas chambers and crematoria for mass executions, to invent and bring into existence sufficient armament to destroy every last living thing on Earth and render the entire planet permanently sterile. (Shall we have a round of thundering applause for Free Will? Let’s hear it for human beings!) Unlike the dogs and cats and humans, at least Bichael didn’t go around biting or scratching or killing people.

Oh, but that wasn’t at all what you meant by Free Will. (Oh, no, of course not, naturally not—how thick of me!) That stuff—that, that hooliganism—is all psychotic, you say. You meant the good things. Good?—by what standards? By whose definitions? All those psychotic things have been condoned—if not exhorted and exalted—countless times by individuals, communities, clans, tribes, governments, religious bodies, racial purists or moralists of one fashion or another—after deliberate and reasoned consideration. You can’t get much freer than that, can you? No doubt they all clam-ored—clamor—that it is their moral obligation, their duty, their right to butcher everything and everyone in sight—that they are doing right. When in actuality they are no less mechanisms than a push-peddle bicycle—causally determined, soulless, witless, volitionless machines. You still want to call it Free Will? Fine. Then Free Will directed by sadistic, psychotic judgment. (It’s more charitable simply to call them machines. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do and all that.)

Ah, you say (sniggering smugly), but the human beings created the bicycle. Yes. That was what made it so pathetically tragical. They created the bicycle, and the airplane, and the music, the mathematics, the art, the architecture…. But Luchars would never again be able to hear Wagner’s hauntingly heroic Siegfried’s Funeral Music without remembering that it was played when Josef Stalin died and that millions of people had wept. Or that the charming Viennese waltzes of the Strausses were played by orchestras of concentration-camp prisoners to lull new arrivals into a false sense of security before they were stripped of their clothes and valuables, shorn of their hair, and herded to the showers.

But the humans and dogs and cats give love, you insist. Well, so did Bichael. It returned measure for measure the time, attention, and care it received in the form of smooth, trouble-free, effortless riding. It was almost amazing how much negligence and outright abuse it would tolerate and still get you where you wanted to go. Perhaps that was why, on this, their last day together, Luchars had made a point of putting the tool kit and lubricating grease and oil in the saddle bag, and why he had left the security chain wrapped around the seat post with the key sticking out of the lock.

He glanced back; the bicycle was still there. He forced himself to keep walking forward. You fool! he thought. It’s nothing more than an inanimate pile of scrap metal. The bicycle does not—cannot—give one infinitesimal damn what you do with it. It doesn’t care, and you don’t care; therefore, this cannot be hurting; it isn’t pain that you feel. You feel nothing. Nothing—do you hear?

He really didn’t want to see who would ride off with it, but that was part of his self-imposed discipline: to watch unflinchingly as it was being stolen. And yet, even through the last remnants of this pain-that-could-not-possibly-be-pain, he was suspicious of his own motives. For there was some part of him deep inside—which he struggled not to acknowledge—which desperately desired to look at the bicycle for as long as it was still possible to see it. That part of him still desperately loved the bicycle and all it stood for. For the bicycle was his last link to the old days—to his old self.

Bichael had been the first truly valuable possession Luchars had ever owned. He’d purchased it almost fifteen years before, while he was still only in high school. His father had deemed it an outrageous extravagance ($1300 for a bicycle???—what’s it made of?—platinum???), but had finally agreed to cosign on a bank loan—Luchars’ first loan (oh, the excitement and trepidation of that moment!). His parents had chalked it up to a case of sour grapes, as Luchars wasn’t even old enough to drive without an adult in the front passenger seat until he was a sophomore in college. But they figured the loan was a good lesson in adult responsibility, sort of on the order of if you want a pet you have to feed it. Only Luchars had never wanted a pet.

Without reminder, every week for more than two years Luchars had dutifully set aside half his wages from his part-time job at his father’s concrete company to make the monthly loan installments, and then paid off the last four payments early in a lump sum. In subsequent years the nominal value of the bicycle would become like loose change in his pocket compared to the price of the toys he was able to—and most readily did—afford. But the bicycle was in some measure symbolic, like a millionaire’s first dollar ever earned—to be torn brutally from its place of honor on the wall, the glass frame shattered, the money ripped out and viciously crushed into a ball to be thrown out into the street for any stray passerby to pick up and do with as he pleased….

Disposing of Bichael in a sense seemed to epitomize Luchars’ deliberate annihilation of his past. The other things hadn’t hurt like this (this doesn’t hurt, he reminded himself forcefully, for the umpteenth time). Selling his house on the lake, the house he had designed and partially built himself—now that should have hurt. But it hadn’t, not really. He’d bargained and haggled over the price like the best real-estate speculator, ruthlessly determined to hold out for a nice fat profit. And when the buyers had finally handed over the certified check made out to close to half a million dollars, Luchars had been coldly satisfied. (Coldly satisfied?—hell!—he’d been jubilant, ecstatic, beside himself with joy; if he’d been any happier he would have exploded!)

No, that hadn’t hurt at all. Not one little bit. Hahah!—and those suckers would be paying off their mortgage for the next 50 years. Not that the house and property weren’t worth every penny of it, you understand. Not that the house wasn’t constructed well beyond the building-code minimums, using the highest-grade materials, and with an indulgent eye towards every possible user convenience and luxury. And not that the property wasn’t some of the very choicest real estate on the lake. In fact, the exact way in which the buyers qualified as suckers (they were damned lucky to have gotten his house at any price!) momentarily escaped him…unless…it was that they, too, would be suckered into loving it to the point where they, too, would not be able to bear parting with it—oh, will you stop this sentimental rubbish!

The cars and airplanes? Why, he’d gone through those so fast as a matter of course—three and four at a time—it would have made your head spin. (It had certainly made his head spin. Spins. Yes, he liked spins.) He would buy a new sports car or van or truck or jeep and keep it for all of four or five months, and then trade it in on some new fancy; never had any less than three different vehicles around. Same basic arrangement with the airplanes; always upgrading them, always experimenting with something new. So there was really nothing at all unusual about his getting rid of them this last time except…he just hadn’t quite…bothered to replace any of them. (Yes: bothered; he liked that, the subtle downplay; it made him feel all the more callously indifferent and insensitive.)

The two incredibly beautiful Steinway concert grands (on your knees even to think of them!) he had given to the University for the price of carting them away. That should have hurt—except it had…well, if truth be told, it had made a very nice income-tax deduction, and that had pleased him to no end. (Was that what he was trying to escape from?—taxes and accountants and lawyers? Oh, if only it were something simple like that! he thought.)

The books he had piled behind the Public Library—boxes upon boxes upon boxes of them. The books, which had been his only extravagance throughout the endless years as a student; the books, which he had worshipped above all else as the transmitters of knowledge, the fountainhead of wisdom—oh, for Pete’s sake, spare me your maudlin emotionalism! You know very well they were a royal pain in the neck to cart around and every time you moved you swore you were going to put them all to the torch. And besides, those were all other people’s books. It’s when you take your own books and you take the pages of the original manuscripts (You should keep the originals in a safety-deposit box for the entire duration of the copyright—oh, go to hell!) and you burn them…one…by…one. You don’t just throw them away; you burn them. You burn all the years of notes, all the hundreds of letters, the articles and papers, the theses and dissertations, the personal journals, all the musical compositions, all the drawings. Everything. Every last damned scrap of paper.

How does such madness begin? you wonder. Very simply, very easily, almost insidiously. (You should have wondered why, instead of how; but since you didn’t, I shan’t tell you. Of course, I probably wouldn’t have told you anyway, but that is neither here nor there.) It begins one day when you just stop answering the telephone. Very simple thing: it rings, you ignore it. (Or rather, you don’t actually ignore it—not at first anyway. No, no, you gloat, gleam, and are insufferably and inanely pleased with yourself for not jumping up like a Pavlovian dog with its tongue hanging out at the sound of it.) Then you become more sophisticated and deactivate the bell. (There ain’t no god-damned law says you have to answer your goddamned phone!) And finally you have the contraption disconnected altogether.

And from there it’s a simple progression (or perhaps retrogression is the more descriptively accurate term) to not answering your mail, or the door, or to your name being called out in the street. (Aha!—and here you thought these things were indelibly ingrained, automatic reflexes. But I assure you they are not. No, good Christian friends, they fade away into oblivion with astonishing, if not frightening, rapidity. And so you just stare back blankly when someone calls out to you—and it doesn’t even occur to you that the proper thing would have been a verbal response of some kind until after it’s much too late.) And the process feeds and builds upon itself until one day you turn around to look behind you to see that your bicycle…. No. Someone else’s bicycle…is gone.

Well, stop gaping like a moron! Bicycles are stolen every day. Keep walking forward. MUSH! Feel the pavement under your feet, heel-toe, heel-toe. (Who was it dared to say you couldn’t feel anything?) Just one foot in front of the other. That’s better, much better. Now, see?—that wasn’t hard at all, was it?

Luchars turned around to look again. Truly, it was gone. Without a trace. Well, what were you expecting, Idiot? he thought. To see little bits of bicycle lying scattered about or an indentation in the pavement where it had stood?

Clean, painless, as though none of it had ever existed; swallowed up into the vast depths of his mind’s ocean. An entire lifetime—liquidated. Luchars shook his head wearily. You can make jokes, even at a time like this, he thought.

Who was it said, I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor—and rich is better? Well, it was better, all right—as long as you didn’t let it go to your head and turn you into a greedy, spoiled, rotten, vindictive, selfish, power-hungry lecher. Luchars’ self-assessment was that he had been drunk with money and it had brought to the surface all the very worst traits of his character. People foolishly dreamed of winning the $20-million lottery, he thought. Oh, the things they’d buy! Ferraris and Mercedes-Benzes and mansions by the sea and trips around the world and diamonds and servants and Playboy bunnies by the limousineful. But it was very likely to be at the price of your soul, because it took a very extraordinary caliber of person not to be destroyed by wealth, especially sudden, unaccustomed, undeserved wealth. Luchars remembered a favorite author writing on the potential dangers of too much money:

Soon as it gets strong enough to dictate terms, then it will squabble over its offices and spoils—and grow heady with power and territory. The Christian afoot is a formidable fellow—but—when he becomes prosperous enough to ride a horse…. A Christian on horseback will be just like any other man on horseback.

Of course, Luchars didn’t believe in the soul and the last thing in the world he was trying to be was a good Christian. Heaven forbid! But he had destroyed himself all the same. It wasn’t that he’d squandered the money away, nor was it undeserved; on the contrary, he’d worked very hard for it and turned quite a tidy profit with it. And it, in turn, had allowed him to compress decades of living into only a few years. That was one thing money really was good for: it bought time, by purchasing the energy and effort of others. So you could get to Hell just that much faster. The Christian on horseback (or in an expensive sports car) galloped towards Hell.

But all that, of course, had nothing to do with why he’d decided to cash in his chips. It was all behind him now, his whole sordid past. Now, for all practical purposes, all that was left of Jonathan Luchars was the clothes he wore, assorted pieces of identification in an otherwise empty wallet, and the memories that refused to be eradicated from his brain.

Why does such madness begin? You ask why?—as if in all the universe there were actually an answer; as if—if there were an answer—he would not have found it. Don’t you think the question preyed on his mind every waking moment; that if he could do otherwise, he would? You see, this was all easy—because there was nothing else that could be hard in comparison, simply because there was no alternative available to him, nothing else he could do.

Easy. Yes, easy. It had even been easy to sign up. He had thought his hand might shake, might simply out-and-out refuse to write his name. But it hadn’t. It had flowed smoothly and naturally. Of course, it wasn’t his signature, his real signature—the hundred-thousand-dollar signature. But he had signed.

The physical had been…interesting. Luchars had been mildly curious to see if they would detect anything. But, of course (and he had to smile at this, to give Them credit—to give the Devil his due), there was virtually nothing to detect: no tangible evidence; no marks, no scars, no broken bones—not that these medical marvel men would have been likely to spot them even if there had been. They didn’t catch his advanced case of hand dermatitis until they went to take his fingerprints—and discovered he didn’t have any; only painfully dried, cracked, unidentifiable skin.

And to all the other inconvenient questions, he simply lied: Headaches? No. Insomnia? No, never. Stomach trouble? No. Dizziness? No. Fainting spells? No, no. Impotence? Certainly not. In fact, the whole thing was rather comical. The doctor, glancing over his chart, had observed that Luchars seemed to be in rather remarkable physical condition; a little thin maybe, but otherwise—except for the mysterious hand dermatitis—in perfect health; in fact, in exceptional health, with extremely low pulse and respiration rates, extraordinary muscle tone.

Yes, Luchars had replied negligently, he supposed so. Just lucky I guess.

The luck didn’t, by any chance, the doctor had asked—equally negligently—just happen to be due to something like, say, oh, maybe—long-distance running?

Running?—Luchars had laughed a very convincing laugh. You mean, as in jogging? (He had used the quotation marks like ten-foot tongs.) No—still chuckling—he was afraid not. Jogging was for sophisticated white-collar preppie types. He wouldn’t be caught dead jogging! (But would the good doctor believe the sophisticated, white-collar, preppie-type sport of long-distance cycling? You try riding a bicycle halfway around the world and see what it does for your cardiovascular system and muscle tone. But he hadn’t said that. It wouldn’t have done to have said that.)

And so he was reporting for duty at 9 a.m., like he’d been told to, like a good little soldier boy.

Ah, yes, Mr…Litt…Lon…Lum—ah, here we are: Luchars. Was she pronouncing that correctly? No, it was with a hard k. Oh, well, then would Mr. Lewkers please be seated and the Recruiting Sergeant would be with him for the final interview in just a few moments.

Luchars sat down obediently and stared down at the floor so as not to have to look at any more of his fellow men. He concentrated very hard on thinking about nothing. But he had never been very good at thinking about nothing, and so pretty soon he was puzzling over the semantic difference between thinking about nothing and not thinking about anything. And from there to the general subject of negatives, double negatives (I ain’t thinkin’ ’bout nuthin’!), triple negatives (I’m not not thinkin’ ’bout nuthin’), and split infinitives (to not think versus not to think). After all, where would Shakespeare have been if the question had been to be, or to not be? After an hour and 45 minutes of this, Luchars’ name was mispronounced and he was directed to the Sergeant’s office.

The Sergeant was a fairly bulky man in his early 40’s, a career man, with hair graying at the temples, very precisely cut, and a manner suggesting that it was his privilege to usher new recruits into the service of their country but they had better show the proper respect if they knew what was good for them. He decided that Luchars did not look particularly as though he knew what was good for him. The Sergeant took an immediate disliking to him and eyed him belligerently.

Was he Jonathan D. Luchars?

Luchars produced a Social Security card to that effect and handed it across the desk. The Sergeant glanced at it briefly and then asked for another piece of identification, preferably something with a picture on it. Luchars made a show of looking through his wallet, located an old, outdated Atlanta library card, a discount classicalCD-club card, and an old movie-theater stub. He set these down on the Sergeant’s desk and shook his head apologetically.

Don’t wag your head at me, boy! Didn’t he have a tongue?

Luchars smiled innocently and said he didn’t have much of anything else.

Sir.

Sir.

Did Mr. Luchars mean to say he didn’t have even a driver’s license or voter-registration card or auto-insurance card or credit cards or something?

That is what he meant to say, Sir. (Monstrous quick learner.) As for the driver’s license—well, he’d never been able to afford a car. And as for the credit cards—he’d never been able to qualify.

What about a birth certificate?

Well (Luchars scratched his head perplexedly), he supposed there was probably one around somewhere. After all, he had been born, although that was certainly no guarantee. But he really wouldn’t have any idea how to go about getting a hold of it. Nobody’d ever asked him before.

Mmmm. Indeed. Well, no matter. He was here now; that was the important thing. (Numbskull.) But just to make sure, the Sergeant consulted the identity check. Physical description: male Caucasian; 5 feet 11 inches, 164 pounds.; medium to large frame; black hair, shoulder length, unkempt (the Sergeant sniffed contemptuously in agreement—damned hippie); black beard, full (damned pirate!); brown eyes; small scar, right cheek. The right thumbprint…. The Sergeant did a double take: the thumbprint was an unintelligible smear of crisscrossing lines and cracks. He frowned and ordered Luchars to extend his right hand. Hmmmph, same mess.

But not that it much mattered. At this point the Army didn’t really care who he was; a body is a body is a body. He fit the physical description to a t and it wasn’t the Sergeant’s personal responsibility anyway. Somebody else had already approved the fellow and filled out the necessary paperwork. And it wasn’t like Army Intelligence was going to come around asking about him! In any event, the so-called thumbprint did correspond to the Social Security number and the Jonathan D. Luchars.

And just what did the D stand for in Mr. Luchars’ name?

It didn’t stand for anything, Sir.

(This was too much. The Sergeant tilted back in his chair and regarded Luchars…reluctantly.) Did Mr. Luchars actually expect the Sergeant to believe that?

Mr. Luchars, Sir, actually didn’t expect the Sergeant to do anything. (Nor did he care, one way or the other.)

Was he trying to be insubordinate?!

Insuwhodinate? Oh—insubordinate! Did that mean…? Oh! Oh, no, Sir! Heaven forbid, Sir. It was the thing farthest from his mind, Sir. The fact of the matter was, Sir, that his parents had been uneducated people who didn’t have a true understanding of the principle behind the middle initial. They had figured that what was good enough for Harry S. Truman was good enough for their son. His parents had always been great admirers of Harry S. Truman—

Yessss. Thank you. (The Sergeant consulted the application papers.) And Mr. Luchars’ parents were both dead now?

Yes, Sir, God rest them.

And he had no next of kin whatsoever?

Not so far as he knew, Sir. He was sort of hoping to make the Army his family, if the Sergeant knew what he meant, Sir.

And Luchars had had no formal education beyond the eleventh grade?

It was a heavenly miracle he’d gotten even that far, Sir.

(The Sergeant was inclined to agree.) No (cough) foreign languages?

Not hardly, Sir, unless the Sergeant wanted to count Pig Latin. O-day ou-yay eakspay ig-Pay—

And Mr. Luchars had held—(the Sergeant skimmed cursorily through a long list of what were unquestionably the most thrilling occupations he’d ever heard of: window washing, dishwashing, lawn mowing, horse-stall cleaning, janitoring, box stacking, envelope stuffing, stamp licking, bootlicking, shoveling, sweeping)—only odd jobs during the intervening…eight years?

That was correct, Sir.

And he was now…?

Twenty-six, Sir.

And Mr. Luchars wanted to join up because…?

Because he hoped…to-get-train-ing-for-a-bet-ter-high-er-pay-ing-job-to-see-moreof-the-world-and…um, oh, what was it?…oh, yeah!…and-to-have-the-op-por-tu-ni-tyto-serve-God-and-his-coun-try. (Just like it said, word for word, minus punctuation, in the recruiting brochure.)

Well, that was fine, just fine. (The Sergeant coughed again into his hand. Jesus—there was one born every minute. But somebody had to clean out the johns, and it sounded like this bozo had had plenty of experience. He shuffled through the rest of the papers in the file. Everything seemed to be in order—medical exam okay, police record clean, all the tests taken and passed—well, barely. He looked back up at Luchars. He couldn’t resist taunting him, or rather, trying to taunt him. He wasn’t sure this one would recognize an insult if it walked up and punched him in the nose.)

Mr. Luchars was aware—was he not?—that the Army was doing him a great favor by accepting him with test scores that were just barely on the tolerance borderline, that the Army had passed over other more qualified candidates in order to give him a chance to better himself?

Oh, yes, Sir! And he surely did appreciate it. (He’d had such a good time taking their stupid, piddly little tests. Fifty percent was the passing grade?—then 50% it would be, by God!—no more, no less: he went through them and answered every other question correctly. The remaining questions…oh, wellllll, he decided in the end to answer those correctly, too, out of sheer boredom; but to darken in the answer blocks one space to the right of the correct ones. Call it a…memorial to the Doppler effect of red shift.)

Oh, Mr. Luchars did understand that the hair and beard were going to have to go?

Yes, Sir, thank you, Sir. He realized that. But he didn’t mind, Sir.

Then would he please sign here, and here, and…here. That was fi…. (My eightyear-old daughter has a better signature, the Sergeant thought. Good Christ, what has the Army been reduced to? It was bad enough