Read Online The Müller-Fokker Effect by John Sladek - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Sladek
Tags: Science-Fiction
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‘It’s so easy with KREW! It’s
magic!’
Six
At six hundred hours the first bell rings.
Spot (Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp) gets out of bed in the approved manner, first untying the thongs that fasten his wrists to the top side of the blanket, then placing his left foot on the floor (counting off the toes aloud as they touch in order), then pivoting smartly so as to come to attention in a full brace. There are seven wrinkles under his chin, the cleft between his shoulder blades can grip a ping-pong ball, his stomach is sucked in and his elbows make 150° angles.
He holds this position while General Rockstone bellows the morning invocation over the video address system (a cadet is not allowed to look at the screen). Then Spot makes his bed with mitered corners, sweeps his room (beginning at the Northwest corner, in honor of Rockstone’s home state, Alaska) and returns to attention.
At the next bell, he is allowed forty-five seconds to go to the toilet, one minute to shower, and one minute to get into his uniform (tucking in the shirt with wooden paddles). Next, inspection.
Gen. Flamel (‘Rocky’) Rockstone was retiring as president of the St Praetexta Military Academy, and Lt Col Algernon Fouts was taking his place. The entire cadre had assembled on the parade ground, in wind and drizzle, to hear the shrill voice of the cadet colonel read the official history of Rocky’s major (indeed his only) engagement in World War Two:
The US held a chain of Pacific islands known as the Corydons. All but one small island at the end of the chain (thought to be uninhabitable) had been fully cleared and turned to military uses. On the last day of the war, Rocky (then a lieutenant) and thirty men were being ferried by plane from a base in the Corydons to a distant fleet. The plane passed over the entire island chain, flying low and taking of course no evasive action. When it reached the last, Sweet Potato Island, the sky around it was suddenly filled with small-arms fire.
The pilot was killed at once. The wounded co-pilot just managed to crash-land in a thicket. And on VJ Day Rocky and his new command found themselves in the hands of the enemy.
The loss of their plane was somehow undetected—perhaps everyone had been indoors listening to the capitulation on shortwave—and no one came looking for them.
Here the official account was a list of hideous tortures, heroic sacrifices and so on, and it stressed the bravery of Lt Rockstone. What made the tortures unendurable was their taking place within sight of a US naval base on the next island. Rocky and his group were able to see ships come and go, planes skywriting V’s, and even hear victory salutes. They themselves were well hidden in the jungle, and their captors, a stubborn and self-sufficient unit, refused to believe what was obviously true. The plane was assumed lost at sea, and, due to Japanese and American clerical errors, rescue took well over a year.
While they listened to the official account, many of the cadets turned their thoughts to the other, unofficial, version they had read last night after lights-out. It mentioned no tortures. It said in fact that Rocky and his men were treated well by the Japanese, who starved themselves to give them the choicest food, saw to their health, cleanliness and well-being, and even made small gifts of money. It seemed these Japanese soldiers had been without women for some time…
But this was only a schoolboy version, written ungrammatically and typed out in many smudgy carbons, read by flashlights under the blankets. None who read it could really believe all of it.
The shrill voice stopped, and the band, their instruments untuned by the cold, struck up a warped march. The whole school marched past the reviewing stand, past the bunting bearing the school motto (‘Those who say we are women are liars’ was the translation) and once around the parade ground. There were three large rectangles each composed of four small
magic!’
Six
At six hundred hours the first bell rings.
Spot (Cadet Sturgemoore Shairp) gets out of bed in the approved manner, first untying the thongs that fasten his wrists to the top side of the blanket, then placing his left foot on the floor (counting off the toes aloud as they touch in order), then pivoting smartly so as to come to attention in a full brace. There are seven wrinkles under his chin, the cleft between his shoulder blades can grip a ping-pong ball, his stomach is sucked in and his elbows make 150° angles.
He holds this position while General Rockstone bellows the morning invocation over the video address system (a cadet is not allowed to look at the screen). Then Spot makes his bed with mitered corners, sweeps his room (beginning at the Northwest corner, in honor of Rockstone’s home state, Alaska) and returns to attention.
At the next bell, he is allowed forty-five seconds to go to the toilet, one minute to shower, and one minute to get into his uniform (tucking in the shirt with wooden paddles). Next, inspection.
Gen. Flamel (‘Rocky’) Rockstone was retiring as president of the St Praetexta Military Academy, and Lt Col Algernon Fouts was taking his place. The entire cadre had assembled on the parade ground, in wind and drizzle, to hear the shrill voice of the cadet colonel read the official history of Rocky’s major (indeed his only) engagement in World War Two:
The US held a chain of Pacific islands known as the Corydons. All but one small island at the end of the chain (thought to be uninhabitable) had been fully cleared and turned to military uses. On the last day of the war, Rocky (then a lieutenant) and thirty men were being ferried by plane from a base in the Corydons to a distant fleet. The plane passed over the entire island chain, flying low and taking of course no evasive action. When it reached the last, Sweet Potato Island, the sky around it was suddenly filled with small-arms fire.
The pilot was killed at once. The wounded co-pilot just managed to crash-land in a thicket. And on VJ Day Rocky and his new command found themselves in the hands of the enemy.
The loss of their plane was somehow undetected—perhaps everyone had been indoors listening to the capitulation on shortwave—and no one came looking for them.
Here the official account was a list of hideous tortures, heroic sacrifices and so on, and it stressed the bravery of Lt Rockstone. What made the tortures unendurable was their taking place within sight of a US naval base on the next island. Rocky and his group were able to see ships come and go, planes skywriting V’s, and even hear victory salutes. They themselves were well hidden in the jungle, and their captors, a stubborn and self-sufficient unit, refused to believe what was obviously true. The plane was assumed lost at sea, and, due to Japanese and American clerical errors, rescue took well over a year.
While they listened to the official account, many of the cadets turned their thoughts to the other, unofficial, version they had read last night after lights-out. It mentioned no tortures. It said in fact that Rocky and his men were treated well by the Japanese, who starved themselves to give them the choicest food, saw to their health, cleanliness and well-being, and even made small gifts of money. It seemed these Japanese soldiers had been without women for some time…
But this was only a schoolboy version, written ungrammatically and typed out in many smudgy carbons, read by flashlights under the blankets. None who read it could really believe all of it.
The shrill voice stopped, and the band, their instruments untuned by the cold, struck up a warped march. The whole school marched past the reviewing stand, past the bunting bearing the school motto (‘Those who say we are women are liars’ was the translation) and once around the parade ground. There were three large rectangles each composed of four small
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