Cyberpunk (26 page)

us, and he was interesting for a change. While we watched the aurora

twist and caper he talked soft about what it was like to be a kid during

the Star War, with all the lasers scattering ghost light off the upper

atmospheric dust, and the kinetic killers popping and flashing and

raining streaking debris like meteorites, and the charged particle beams

spiralling down the Earth’s magnetosphere to trigger auroral displays

that still glowed livid in his memory.

Another night Biology Instructor Baker came along, to give us a

little object lesson in the limits of eyes. We humans are so dependent on

daylight, and color. Go out on a still winter night, sometime, and stand

there with your eyes closed. Amazing how much
life
is going on—and

how much of it you walk right by, when you depend on your eyes.

My favorite part of Astronomy, though, was Orion: Some nights

when I felt rotten, I could just step outside and look at the big guy in the

sky, I got a charge. It’s a
male
thing, I think; you look at Orion hanging

up there, tall and proud in the winter sky, and you stand up a bit

straighter, square your shoulders a bit broader. Almost gets to be

religious.

I mean, not like Chaplain Thomas droning at us during Sunday

morning assembly, or the guys in the Wotan Club with all their drumpounding.

The big guy in the sky touches something deep, something

that makes you resonate. Gets real easy to see where all those Father Sky

and Mother Earth religions come from: Orion. He’s up there, and you

know he’s been up there for three thousand years, not watching, not

beckoning. Just saying,
Be proud, boy. You can be like me
.

A freezeframe from my memory: Me, alone, in the middle of a

frozen field, under a crystal bright winter sky. If you don’t think about

God then, you’re dead.

#

Of course there was a down side, and the down side had a name, and

lo, its name was
Roid Rogers
. Seventeen hours a week, I belonged in the

classroom. Five hours a week, I could hide out with Mr. Lewellyn.

Cyberpunk 1.0
139

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Another five hours, I was in the gym or out on the parade field with

Payne.

The rest of the time, I belonged to Cadet Captain Rogers.

I spit-polished Rogers’ boots. I made his bunk. I washed and pressed

his uniforms, and the damn creases had to be absolute
perfect
or he’d

throw his clothes on the floor and make me start over. As Lewellyn

would say, he did a real good job
objectifying
me, and by December

he’d successfully zeroed out all the coolness points I’d acquired in the

Peloponnesian Wars and turned me into the Grade One class’s

designated dump. Some weeks I wound up polishing every damn boot in

the whole damn bunkhouse.

Of course, on the days Rogers was feeling
mean
, it gave him a

special thrill to make me stand at attention for an hour or two out on the

quad, all the while saluting every upperclassman who happened by and

telling them what a jerk I was.

At night, when I was finally allowed to drop exhausted on my bunk,

I’d have the most incredible livid technicolor dreams about Rogers, and

the day I’d finally catch him alone down at the firing range ...

I wouldn’t kill him; at least, not right away. No, I’d start by shooting

him in the throat. He’d turn around, a look of horrified surprise on his

face, and try to cry out, but all he’d be able to do is cough blood. Then,

before he could move another step, my second bullet’d take out his left

kneecap, and he’d fall down on his one good knee.

He’d raise his hands to beg, look at me real pitiful, and try to sort of

plead for his life, but all the while he’d be choking on his own blood and

gasping for air. I’d watch him cold and calm, reload slow, and wait for

him to turn his head to see if anyone was coming to help him. When he

did, I’d put my third bullet right through both his eyes.

Oh, it’d be beautiful, blood spraying everywhere, him flopping

around like a beached carp! He’d fall over backwards and lie there,

trying to scream, while I walked over, rested my rifle muzzle lightly on

his nuts, and gave him a slow count of five to realize exactly what was

coming next. Then I’d turn him into a boy soprano the hard way.

Cyberpunk 1.0
140

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

And then, not being a totally cruel guy, I’d give him two in the heart

at point-blank range. Beautiful.

Okay, I admit this isn’t everyone’s idea of a sweet dream, but
you

try living with a guy who makes you get up half an hour before reveille

just to pre-warm his boots. My passive resistance phase lasted almost

until Spring.

Until the day I came down with some kind of low-grade upper

respiratory virus, and I was up all night wheezing and drinking lots of

water to try to keep the sore throat damped down. And it was a real cold

night, so I didn’t want to go out to the latrine for the discharge cycle, so

I just sort of crossed my legs and tried to ignore my aching bladder and

sat there, drinking more water, until around0/ 40/0/ when I finally kind of

dozed off into a fitful sleep. Only to have Rogers wake me an hour later

and order me to warm his boots...

Some temptations are just too strong to resist. I did KP for a month

and spent another year in utter Hell, but dammit, it was
worth
it!

#

I learned a lot of things, that year. I learned to talk southern-fried

when I wanted to blend into the woodwork, and to switch on the total

cyberpunk lang when I wanted to make with the pain-in-the-ass routine.

I learned that when the mess hall served up okra and grits it was a
treat
,

not punishment like I thought at first. I learned to tie a full Windsor knot

for my dress uniform, and I learned that A-200 Pyrinate comes in gallon

jugs for institutional use and smells like hell, but it really
does
kill lice

real good.

The biggest surpriser was learning that during the academic year,

Payne was actually something a lot like a normal Phys Ed instructor.

The one you had to watch out for was The Colonel.

Forget fried chicken. Colonel Ernst Von Schlager, Real Army

Retired (
whose
Army?, I kept wanting to ask), School Commandant, and

Our Beloved Founder, was a true study in fossil Prussian arrogance. A

tough, grizzled, remote old S.O.B. with gray-bristle hair and steely blue

eyes, we lower grades didn’t mix with him much. Most times he was just

Cyberpunk 1.0
141

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

the capstone on the Sunday assembly: after church services, the gruntherders

would march us out to the quad and make us stand at attention

while The Colonel went into some loud tirade about whatever had pissed

him off lately.

If the Colonel showed up for your class, though, you were in for a

real treat.

That’s sarcasm, if you didn’t recognize it.

Example:

The Colonel struts across the gym, hands clasped behind his back,

scowl on his face. He stops, pivots. “Consider the various liberation

wars!” he bellows. “If you can see 50 yards in a jungle, it’s not a jungle,

it’s a clearing!

“Consider the First through Fourth Jihads! The defenders had

visibility out to two klicks, but the towelheads used human wave tactics.

You simply
can’t
reload fast enough to stop a human wave!” He starts

pacing again, cycling up for the next outburst.

“The unpleasant truth, men, is that excluding air power and crewserved

weapons, the majority of battlefield killing takes place at ranges

of under 100 yards. Combat is a close and personal thing. And what

modern automatic rifles are best at is disarming their users’ really fast!”

He pauses; his voice drops to a softer note.

“Now, in a few years some genius will probably figure out that the

thing to do is to slow down the rate of fire and make the bullets smarter.

They’ve already done that with combat aircraft. Who cares if a Batshit

missile costs a million a pop, if it’s virtually guaranteed that you can

take out a thirty-million dollar aircraft with two shots?

“But in the meantime, remember that when you fire an M-29 on full

auto, you disarm yourself in less than 3 seconds. Then it becomes
very

close and personal. The ugly truth, men, is that when it comes down to

it, your best friend is your bayonet. That’s why it helps to think of a rifle

as a pikestaff that happens to shoot bullets.

“And
that
is why you work with pugil sticks!” He steps over to the

back wall, picks up that blunt-ended staff, hefts it for balance and spins

Cyberpunk 1.0
142

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

it around like a cheerleader’s baton. “Now, who’s first?” He looks us

over, sharp and squinty, locks eyes on me. “You! Front and center!”

Getting your brainpan bashed in by an old grizzle is in some respects

very educational, but it still
hurts
.

Cyberpunk 1.0
143

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Chapter 12

Spring: The sun was shining, the birds were singing, Payne was

braying. “Fall in! Form up!” We stopped kicking the soccer balls around

the airfield, dashed over, and tumbled into some kind of order.

“Dress that line!” he bellowed. “You call that a
line
, pissants?”

While we were shuffling and fidgeting, a Grade Four carrying a big gun

stepped out of the briefing shed. Payne made eye contact with the Grade

Four. The Grade Four shot him a little nod.

“Ten-
shun
!” We snapped to so perfect we clicked.

“Thank you, sargeant,” the Grade Four said quietly. Payne stepped

back deferential, and the Grade Four walked up smiling. “Hi,” he said to

us, and smiled again. I relaxed a notch. My God, at last, a Grade Four

who was halfways human.

“Hello, lads,” he said, a bit louder. “I’m Cadet Captain Johnson, and

I’m here today to give you a little introductory lesson in large-bore

rifles.” He looked at the gun in his hands, then held it up over his head.

“
This
,” he shouted out, in a parade-field bellow he’d obvious learned

from Payne, “is a Russian Mosin-Nagant battle rifle! Designed in 1890

by Colonel Sergei Mosin and the brothers Emile and Leon Nagant, it

was the premier Soviet infantry weapon through most of the twentieth

century!” He dropped the rifle to port arms, slapped open the action. “A

bolt-action box-magazine repeater comparable to the American ‘03

Springfield or the German ‘98 Mauser, it is, like most Russian small

arms, a technically crude, yet extremely rugged and
effective
weapon!”

He closed the action, flipped the rifle over, popped open the trapdoor on

the bottom of the magazine.

“Chambered for the seven-point-six-two by fifty-four millimeter

Cyberpunk 1.0
144

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

rimmed cartridge—that’s the same bullet as an AK-47 round, but in a