"Some of you will also be sharing a hut with your female comrade. At appropriate times you'll be changing clothes there. So-" He paused, then raised his voice. "LISTEN UP! When someone of the other gender is naked in your presence, you will not stare, you will not make comments or gestures, you will not touch them, even accidentally! If you do, you will receive company punishment! Which is whatever I say it is, or whatever Sergeant Fossberg says it is, or your platoon leader or platoon sergeant!"
Again the captain paused. "You are in the army now, and you'll find many things different than you're used to. If you have difficulties with this, talk to Recruit Spieler about it. I've appointed him the company's religious advisor.
"Now! Back to business! The mess hall opens for supper at 1730 hours. That's in fifteen minutes. It closes at 1815. At 1900 you will muster here in field uniform for an evening speed march."
He turned to his field sergeant. "Sergeant Fossberg, the company is yours."
Fossberg nodded. "Thank you, sir." He turned back to the recruits. "Company," he bellowed, "dismissed!"
That evening the company learned what speed march meant, at least to Sergeant Fossberg, at least on that day. They jogged an easy quarter mile, then walked another, alternating the two for an hour and a half in the warm humid summer evening. And on Pastor Luneburger's World, the hours, minutes, days, were 1.13 times as long as Terran standard. As they ran, they were joined by the local version of mosquitoes, which came out in force about sundown. And though the recruits had lost essentially zero conditioning during stasis, few had had distance running as an important part of their life-style at home. At 2100 hours they were dismissed, slick with sweat. Knowing intuitively that the experience had been just a foretaste of the weeks to come.
Then they headed for the showers. The most difficult thing Jael Wesley had ever done was go to the shower room with no more than a towel wrapped around her. Wrapped around her chest, it was not adequate to hide her loins, while around her waist it left her breasts exposed. She draped it around her waist, and with a truculent-looking Esau glowering beside her, walked to the shower room. Then of course came the new most difficult: she had to remove the towel to shower. Esau stayed by her, his scowl daring anyone to say or do or perhaps think anything out of line. If they did, they hid it. Any erections were concealed by turning away.
After a few days, mixed showering would seem routine, though Jael was never totally comfortable with it.
At 2200 hours the Charge of Quarters threw a switch, and the lights went off throughout the trainees' huts. But the night was clear, and rich in stars, and after a minute, Esau's eyes adjusted. Dimly he could make out the cot next to his, and the shadowed form of his wife. It stimulated him; he wanted her very much. Nonetheless he waited; there were men all around them, not yet asleep.
He lay there for half an hour anticipating, not sleepy at all despite the long day. Then, leaning half out of bed on his left hand, he reached toward her with his right and touched her arm. She flinched out of sleep as if burned, sat half up, then saw her husband's arm, and rested her hand on his. He swung his legs out of bed, and stood. She stood too. For pajamas, the troops wore short, dull-green summer drawers, Jael with a dull-green T-shirt. Esau paused, and from his locker took his poncho. Jael did the same, and they padded very carefully out of the hut. Keeping to the shadows, Esau led her through the night to the latrine building, and around behind it. There was the water heater room, its door without a lock; he'd done some advance scouting. They didn't speak till they were inside with the door closed, and didn't leave for nearly an hour.
Back in bed, Esau thought about how he might get a mattress-something for padding-and stash it behind the large water heater. Jael, for her part, thought about what might happen if she got pregnant. She hadn't in six months of trying back home. What a cruel thing it would be to get pregnant now.
The Wesleys weren't the last recruits to get to sleep that night. Not by a long shot. It was 0255 hours when Isaiah Vernon settled groaning onto his cot. He'd discovered one form that company punishment could take. Under the occasional eye of the Charge of Quarters, he'd dug a hole some six feet long, six wide, and six deep. In loamy clay, while water seeped in around his feet. Then, when the hole had met with the CQ's approval, he was ordered to climb out, urinate into it, and fill it up again.
He'd been careful not to ask why.
Chapter 19
Another Shortage
In the Office of Military Resource Planning, Captain Bruno Horvath scanned a message on his screen. "It seems we have a shortage, Colonel," he said laconically. "A critical shortage."
Colonel Wiktor Kobayashi raised a graying bushy eyebrow and grunted. There were endless shortages, most of them flagged critical. "Is that so? What's this one?"
"Nothing new. An old one getting more urgent." The captain flicked it to the colonel's screen. "With three red flags now," he added.
Kobayashi looked. It was the shortage of qualified warbot volunteers again. Warbots carried the cyborg concept to the ultimate, and lots of them were needed, but qualifying was tough. You needed to have lost at least three limbs, including both arms, or two limbs and your eyes, or be dying from incurable injury or illness, or be serving a life term in prison. The central nervous system had to be functional, intelligence normal or above, and personality profile acceptable. Thus most quadriplegics, amputees and convicts were ineligible, as well as older invalids with significant decline in CNS function.
"Nothing to it," the colonel said wryly. "We'll assign a regiment to meet the evacuation ships with swords, and cut both arms and one leg off everyone on board."
"Sorry, Colonel, but we've got a serious shortage of swords. Would laser saws be all right?"
Kobayashi was rarely sarcastic, and didn't like it when he was. And the shortage of warbots was real and serious; sarcasm wouldn't reduce it. It directly and seriously affected the combat readiness of all infantry divisions, of which 63 were now in training. Some of those divisions had begun or were approaching interactive tactical training-so-called unit training. Within five months, the plans called for a total of 300 divisions in service or training. And tactics-even strategy-called for each to have a "normal" contingent of warbots.
He was well-informed on the subject, and knew the arithmetic too well. Three hundred divisions, each with eight regiments, each regiment with two platoons of warbots. Forty-eight hundred warbot platoons; some 110,000 bots overall. But the latest figures showed only 4,400 qualified volunteers. If every one of them completed training successfully, that would still mean fewer than two bots, let alone platoons, per regiment. And for most warbot tasks and missions, "organics"-ordinary infantry-were not suitable substitutes.
Producing trained warbots took time and care. First the central nervous system had to be extracted from the body. Then came its painstaking neuro-electronic bottling. Installing the bottled CNS in a battle servo was similarly demanding. And finally a period of neurological, and sometimes psychological detraumatization and "breaking in" was required, before the individual was ready for warbot training.*
But the basic problem was the demanding legal qualifications for volunteers.
"Shit," the colonel muttered. The captain was tempted to answer "Yessir. I'll be right back, sir," but he sensed that just now, humor would not be appreciated. Certainly not that kind.
Kobayashi touched a pair of keys and began to dictate.
I see no possibility of providing the necessary warbots without (a) modifying the legal qualifications for volunteers, and (b) promoting intensively. Therefore I STRONGLY RECOMMEND that the army: