Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [31]
"Yes—of course," said Beatrice, rising.
The party of three crossed the zodiac on the foyer floor, moved into the balmy dark.
The flashlight beam danced before them.
"Really—" said Beatrice, "I’m as curious to find out what it is as you are."
"It looks like kind of a prefabricated thing made out of aluminum," said Miss Wiley.
"It looks like a mushroom-shaped water tank or something," said Helmholtz, "only it is squatting right on the ground."
"Really?" said Beatrice.
"You know what I said it was, don’t you?" said Miss Wiley.
"No—" said Beatrice, "what did you say it was?"
"I have to whisper," said Miss Wiley playfully, "or somebody will want to lock me up in the crazy house." She put her hand to her mouth, directing her loud whisper to Beatrice. "Flying saucer," she said.
4
TENT RENTALS
Rented a tent, a tent, a tent;
Rented a tent, a tent, a tent.
Rented a tent!
Rented a tent!
Rented a, rented a tent.
—SNARE DRUM ON MARS
THE MEN HAD MARCHED to the parade ground to the sound of a snare drum. The snare drum had this to say to them:
Rented a tent, a tent, a tent;
Rented a tent, a tent, a tent.
Rented a tent!
Rented a tent!
Rented a, rented a tent.
They were an infantry division of ten thousand men, formed in a hollow square on a natural parade ground of solid iron one mile thick. The soldiers stood at attention on orange rust. They shivered rigidly, being as much like iron as they could be—both officers and men. Their uniforms were a rough-textured, frosty green—the color of lichens.
The army had come to attention in utter silence. No audible or visible signal had been given. They had come to attention as a man, as though through a stupendous coincidence.
The third man in the second squad of the first platoon of the second company of the third battalion of the second regiment of the First Martian Assault Infantry Division was a private who had been broken from lieutenant-colonel three years before. He had been on Mars for eight years.
When a man in a modern army is broken from field grade to private, it is likely that he will be old for a private, and that his comrades in arms, once they get used to the fact that he isn’t an officer any more, will, out of respect for his failing legs, eyes, and wind, call him something like Pops, or Gramps, or Unk.
The third man in the second squad of the first platoon of the second company in the third battalion of the second regiment of the First Martian Assault Infantry Division was called Unk. Unk was forty years old. Unk was a well-made man—a light heavyweight, dark-skinned, with poet’s lips, with soft brown eyes in the shaded caves of a Cro-Magnon brow ridge. Incipient baldness had isolated a dramatic scalplock.
An illustrative anecdote about Unk:
One time, when Unk’s platoon was taking a shower, Henry Brackman, Unk’s platoon sergeant, asked a sergeant from another regiment to pick out the best soldier in the platoon. The visiting sergeant, without any hesitation, picked Unk, because Unk was a compact, nicely muscled, intelligent man among boys.
Brackman rolled his eyes. "Jesus—you’d think so, wouldn’t you?" he said. "That’s the platoon f-kup."
"You kidding me?" said the visiting sergeant.
"Hell no, I ain’t kidding you," said Brackman. "Look at him—been standing there for ten minutes, and hasn’t touched a piece of soap yet. Unk! Wake up, Unk!"
Unk shuddered, stopped dreaming under the tepid drizzle of the shower head. He looked questioningly at Brackman, bleakly co-operative.
"Use some soap, Unk!" said Brackman. "For Chrissakes, use some soap!"
Now, on the iron parade ground, Unk stood at attention in the hollow square like all the rest.
In the middle of the hollow square was a stone post with iron rings fixed to it. Chains had been drawn rattling through the rings—had been drawn tight around a red-haired soldier standing against a post. The soldier was a clean soldier—but he was not a neat soldier, for all the badges and decorations had been stripped off his uniform, and he had no belt, no necktie, no