Suddenly it seemed there was no market for stripes. Stripes had had lives of their own ever since the grade-freeze began, but now every man in the battalion knew this one was cursed. It had to be retired.
About this time the economy drive loosened up a bit—somebody did a little math and discovered just how much it cost to train new men to replace the ones resigning—and a new stripe came down to the battery. This one was snapped up eagerly.
In only two days it became evident that the Morton stripe wasn't dead yet. The allocation may have been new, but the curse remained. It was retired again.
Three more were authorized the following month. Somewhat apprehensively, the selected men accepted them. The top name on the order got under a falling plank and tore his shoulder muscles. He kept the stripe—and was scalded as soon as he came off sick call by an exploding coffee-urn in the mess hall. He capitulated.
Suddenly the second man had problems. After the normal course had been run, the third one got it.
It was apparent that no one was going to hold a promotion until that stripe was dead.
But how do you kill a stripe?
So long as there were no promotions in the battery, the stripe was dormant. Fine—but the battery itself was dying. Requests for transfer piled the BC's desk, and men in other outfits went to great extremes to avoid transfer in. It was bad for morale; it cast its stigma upon the entire battalion and was even beginning to embarrass Post headquarters.
Word came down, couched in formal, almost incomprehensible army terminology, the essence of which was "or else!" Something had to be done, for a very important foreign dignitary from a nation something less than cordial was scheduled to tour the post, and this battery was on the itinerary. Change it? That was not the Army Way.
The BC had a bright idea.
And so it was done: the VIP was awarded a Genuine Honorary PFC stripe in token of improving relations between differing ideologies. He departed the battery with every indication of supercilious pleasure.
The accident, occurring as it did at a U.S. Army post, made unfortunate headlines. It did not trigger WWIII, quite, but the BC found it convenient to retire in a hurry. The stripe came home.
This time the word descended upon the battalion commander. The essence: "Do not make excuses. Clean it up." It was not necessary to add the "or else" this time, for I am the battalion commander, and I have just about time to make Light Colonel before retirement. I'm not stupid, as majors go. That, gentlemen, is why you see me out here in the rain, in the military cemetery, personally supervising this posthumous and somewhat irregular ceremony. I mean to be quite certain Private Morton knows, wherever he may dwell, that he is henceforth PFC Morton. I'm attaching the order to his headstone.
No one else has his stripe any more.
Any other questions?
IN THE JAWS OF DANGER
And yet another retitling by that bug-eyed-monster at If. My title was "The Value of a Man." This story is the second in the series that I later assembled into a novel, Prostho Plus, published by Berkley and promptly allowed to go out of print. If rejected the first story, accepted the second, rejected the third and fourth, and accepted the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. The first was published by Analog, which bounced the fifth. I worked up three more stories, starting the Prostho Minus series, but no publisher was interested despite the popularity of the first series. It's a headache, trying to make sense of editors. Actually, I harbor the deep suspicion that there is something fundamentally wrong with any editor who rejects anything of mine; I am in that respect a completely typical writer. For now I'll just say that this series started when I had to have $2300 worth of prosthodontistry done on my teeth. That was a third of my annual income then, so I realized I had better make it pay. So I turned most of the work done on my mouth into fiction—and there was a lot of it, because defective cement meant that most of it had to be done a second time, to my pain and the prosthodontist's expense. "Value"—trust an editor to call it "Jaws"!—here, is a simple filling—on a slightly larger scale than is normally the case. For people who ask me where I get my ideas, I can honestly say: from the dentist's chair. In the end, Prostho Plus earned me over $5000, handily covering the cost of my treatment. It also should have proved at last to doubting editors that I could handle humor. But they went right on rejecting my humor, carefully explaining to me that it required a delicate touch that I lacked, until I got into the Xanth series and made my fortune in humor. Editors are very slow learners.
One other note about the editing: in this story I had reference to the High Muck-de-Muck of Gleep, obviously a very important personage. The editor diddled in my text as was his wont and changed it to muck-a-muck. Now I feel that it is the author's prerogative to name the characters in his fantastic fiction, and to spell those names as he deems fit. But it seems this editor knew more of Dr. Dillingham's galaxy than I did, so he corrected my spelling. (Thank Ghod he didn't edit "Phog"!) So I stand corrected; what I thought was "de" was "a". I'll keep that in mind next time I refer to those esteemed authors L. Sprague aCamp and Miriam Allen aFord, and will make sure my next piece is a real tour-a-force.
And a note on gold: bear in mind that this story was written and published in 1967. The price of gold was then $35 an ounce. Just move the decimal right a place or two, and it'll be current.
The Enen—for Dr. Dillingham preferred the acronym to "North Nebula humanoid species"—rushed in and chewed out a message-stick with machinelike dispatch. He handed it to Dillingham and stood by anxiously.
The dentist popped it into the hopper of the transcoder. "Emergency," the little speaker said. "Only you can handle this, Doctor!"
"You'll have to be more specific, Holmes," he said and watched the transcoder type this on to another stick. Since the Enens had no spoken language and he had not learned to decipher their tooth-dents, the transcoder was the vital link in communication.
The names he applied to the Enens were facetious. These galactics had no names in their own language, and they comprehended his humor in this regard no more than had his patients back on distant Earth. But at least they were industrious folk and very clever at physical science.
The Enen read the stick and put it between his teeth for a hurried footnote. It was amazing, Dillingham thought, how effectively they could flex their jaws for minute variations in depth and slant. Compared to this, the human jaw was a clumsy portcullis.
The message went back to the machine. "It's a big toothache that no one can cure. You must come."
"Oh, come now, Watson," Dillingham said, deeply flattered. "I've been training your dentists for six months now, and I must admit they're experienced and intelligent specialists. They know their maxillaries from their mandibulars. As a matter of fact, some of them are a good deal more adept than I, except in the specific area of metallic restorations. Surely—"
But the Enen grabbed the stick before any more could be imprinted by the machine's clattering jaws. "Doctor—this is an alien. It's the son of the high muckamuck of Gleep." The terms, of course, were the ones he had programmed to indicate any ruling dignitary of any other planet. He wondered whether he would be well advised to substitute more serious designations before someone caught on. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would see about it. "You, Doctor, are our only practicing exodontist."