chapter five

LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN HERO

    "We can make the center of a man's memory virtually as sterile as a scalpel fresh from the autoclave. But grains of new experience begin to accumulate on it at once. These grains in turn form themselves into patterns not necessarily favorable to military thinking. Unfortunately, this problem of recontamination seems insoluble."

— DR. MORRIS N. CASTLE,

Director of Mental Health, Mars

Unk's formation halted before a granite barrack, before a barrack in a perspective of thousands, a perspective that ran to seeming infinity on the iron plain. Before every tenth barrack was a flagpole with a banner snapping in the keen wind.

    The banners were all different.

    The banner that fluttered like a guardian angel over Unk's company area was very gay — red and white stripes, and many white stars on a field of blue. It was Old Glory, the flag of the United States of America on Earth.

    Down the line was the red banner of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

    Past that was a wonderful green, orange, yellow, and purple banner, showing a lion holding a sword. It was the flag of Ceylon.

    And past that was a red ball on a white field, the flag of Japan.

    The banners signified the countries that the various Martian units would attack and paralyze when the war between Mars and Earth began.

    Unk saw no banners until his antenna let his shoulders sag, let his joints loosen — let him fall out. He gawked at the long perspective of barracks and flagpoles. The barrack before which he stood had a large number painted over the door. The number was 576.

    Some part of Unk found the number fascinating, made Unk study it. Then he remembered the execution — remembered that the red-headed man he had killed had told him something about a blue stone and barrack twelve.

    Inside barrack 576, Unk cleaned his rifle, found it an extremely pleasant thing to do. He found, moreover, that he still knew how to take the weapon apart. That much of his memory, at any rate, had not been wiped out at the hospital. It made him furtively happy to suspect that there were probably other parts of his memory that had been missed as well. Why this suspicion should make him furtively happy he didn't know.

    He swabbed away at his rifle's bore. His weapon was an 11-millimeter German Mauser, single shot, a type of rifle that made its reputation when used by the Spaniards in the Earthling Spanish-American War. All of the Martian Army's rifles were of about the same vintage. Martian agents, working quietly on Earth, had been able to buy up huge quantities of Mausers and British Enfields and American Springfields for next to nothing.

    Unk's squadmates were swabbing their bores, too. The oil smelled good, and the oily patches, twisting through the rifling, resisted the thrust of the cleaning rod just enough to be interesting. There was hardly any talk.

    No one seemed to have taken particular notice of the execution. If there had been a lesson in the execution for Unk's squadmates, they were finding the lesson as digestible as Pablum.

    There had been only one comment on Unk's participation in the execution, and that had come from Sergeant Brackman. "You done all right, Unk," said Brackrnan.

    "Thanks," said Unk.

    "This man done all right, didn't he?" Brackman asked Unk's squadmates.

    There had been some nods, but Unk had the impression that his squadmates would 'have nodded in response to any positive question, would have, shaken their heads in response to any negative one.

    Unk withdrew the rod and patch, slipped his thumb under the open breech, caught the sunlight on his oily thumbnail. The thumbnail sent the sunlight up the bore. Unk put his eye to the muzzle and was thrilled by perfect beauty. He could have stared happily at the immaculate spiral of the rifling for hours, dreaming of the happy land whose round gate he saw at the other end of the bore. The pink under his oily thumbnail at the far end of the barrel made that far end seem a rosy paradise indeed. Some day he was going to crawl down the barrel to that paradise.

    It would be warm there — and there would be only one moon, Unk thought, and the moon would be fat, stately, and slow. Something else about the pink paradise at the end of the barrel came to Unk, and Unk was puzzled by the clarity of the vision. There were three beautiful women in that paradise, and Unk knew exactly what they looked like! One was white, one was gold, and one was brown. The golden girl was smoking a cigarette in Unk's vision. Unk was further surprised to find that he even knew what kind of cigarette the golden girl was smoking.

    It was a MoonMist Cigarette.

    "Sell MoonMist," Unk said out loud. It felt good to say that — felt authoritative, shrewd.

    "Huh?" said a young colored soldier, cleaning his rifle next to Unk. "What's that you say, Unk?" he said. He was twenty-three years old. His name was stitched in yellow on a black patch over his left breast pocket.

    Boaz was his name.

    If suspicions had been permitted in the Army of Mars, Boaz would have been a person to suspect. His rank was only Private, First Class, but his uniform, though regulation lichen green, was made of far finer stuff, and was much better tailored than the uniform of anyone around him — including the uniform of Sergeant Brackman.

    Everyone else's uniform was coarse, scratchy — held together by clumsy stitches of thick thread. And everyone else's uniform looked good only when the wearer stood at attention. In any other position, an ordinary soldier found that his uniform tended to bunch and crackle, as though made of paper.

    Boaz's uniform followed his every movement with silken grace. The stitches were numerous and tiny. And most puzzling of all: Boaz's shoes had a deep, rich, ruby luster — a luster that other soldiers could not achieve no matter how much they might polish their shoes. Unlike the shoes of anyone else in the company area, the shoes of Boaz were genuine leather from Earth.

    "You say sell something, Unk?" said Boaz.

    "Dump MoonMist. Get rid of it," murmured Unk. The words made no sense to him. He had let them out simply because they had wanted out so badly. "Sell," he said.

    Boaz smiled — ruefully amused. "Sell it, eh?" he said. "O.K., Unk — we sell it." He raised an eyebrow. "What we gonna sell, Unk?" There was something particularly bright and piercing about the pupils of his eyes.

    Unk found this yellow brightness, this sharpness of Boaz's eyes disquieting — increasingly so, as Boaz continued to stare. Unk looked away, looked by chance into the eyes of some of his other squadmates — found their eyes to be uniformly dull. Even the eyes of Sergeant Brackman were dull.

    Boaz's eyes continued to bite into Unk. Unk felt compelled to meet their gaze again. The pupils were seeming diamonds.

    "You don't remember me, Unk?" said Boaz.

    The question alarmed Unk. For some reason, it was important that he not remember Boaz. He was grateful that he really didn't remember him.

    "Boaz, Unk," said the colored man. "I'm Boaz."

    Unk nodded. "How do you do?" he said.

    "Oh — I don't do what you'd call real bad," said Boaz. He shook his head. "You don't remember nothing about me, Unk?"

    "No," said Unk. His memory was nagging him a little now — telling him that he might remember something about Boaz, if he tried as hard as he could. He shushed his memory. "Sorry — " said Unk. "My mind's a blank."

    "You and me — we're buddies," said Boaz. "Boaz and Unk."

    "Um," said Unk.

    "You remember what the buddy system is, Unk?" said Boaz.

    "No," said Unk.

    "Ever' man in ever' squad," said Boaz, "he got a buddy. Buddies share the same foxhole, stick right close to each other in attacks, cover each other. One buddy get in trouble in hand-to-hand, other buddy come up and help, slip a knife in."

    "Um," said Unk.

    "Funny," said Boaz, "what a man'll forget in the hospital and what he'll still remember, no matter what they do. You and me — we trained as buddies for a whole year, and you done forgot that. And then you say that thing 'bout cigarettes. What kind cigarettes, Unk?"

    "I — I forget," said Unk.

    "Try and remember now," said Boaz. "You had it once." He frowned and squinted, as though trying to help Unk remember. "I think it's so interesting what a man can remember after he's been to the hospital. Try and remember everything you can."

    There was a certain effeminacy about Boaz — in the nature of a cunning bully's chucking a sissy under the chin, talking baby-talk to him.

    But Boaz liked Unk — that was in his manner, too.

    Unk had the eerie feeling that he and Boaz were the only real people in the stone building — that the rest were glass-eyed robots, and not very well-made robots at that. Sergeant Brackman, supposedly in command, seemed no more alert, no more responsible, no more in command than a bag of wet feathers.

    "Let's hear all you can remember, Unk," wheedled Boaz. "Old buddy — " he said, "just remember all you can."

    Before Unk could remember anything, the head pain that had made him get on with the execution hurt him again. The pain did not stop, however, with the warning nip. While Boaz watched expressionlessly, the pain in Unk's head became a whanging, flashing thing.

    Unk stood, dropped his rifle, clawed at his head, reeled, screamed, fainted.

    When Unk came to on the barrack floor, his buddy Boaz was daubing Unk's temples with a cold washrag.

    Unk's squadmates stood in a circle around Unk and Boaz. The faces of the squadmates were unsurprised, unsympathetic. Their attitude was that Unk had done something stupid and unsoldierly, and so deserved what he got.

    They looked as though Unk had done something as militarily stupid as silhouetting himself against the sky or cleaning a loaded weapon, as sneezing on patrol or contracting and not reporting a venereal disease, as refusing a direct order or sleeping through reveille, as being drunk on guard or drawing to an inside straight, as keeping a book or a live hand grenade in his footlocker, as asking who had started the Army anyway and why . . .

    Boaz was the only one who looked sorry about what had happened to Unk. "It was all my fault, Unk," he said.

    Sergeant Brackman now pushed through the circle, stood over Unk and Boaz. "Wha'd he do, Boaz?" said Brackman.

    "I was kidding him, Sergeant," said Boaz earnestly. "I told him to try an' remember back as far as he could. I never dreamed he'd go and do it."

    "Oughta have more sense than to kid a man just back from the hospital," said Brackman gruffly.

    "Oh, I know it — I know it," said Boaz, full of remorse. "My buddy — " he said. "God damn me!"

    "Unk," said Brackman, "didn't they tell you about remembering at the hospital?"

    Unk shook his head vaguely. "Maybe," he said. "They told me a lot."

    "That's the worst thing you can do, Unk — remembering back," said Brackman. "That's what they put you in the hospital for in the first place — on account of you remembered too much." He made cups of his stubby hands, held in them the heart-breaking problem Unk had been. "Holy smokes," he said, "you were remembering so much, Unk, you weren't worth a nickel as a soldier."

    Unk sat up, laid his hand on his breast, found that the front of his blouse was wet with tears. He thought of explaining to Brackman that he hadn't really tried to remember back, that he'd known instinctively that that was a bad thing to do — but that the pain had hit him anyway. He didn't tell Brackman that for fear that the pain would come again.

    Unk groaned and blinked away the last of the tears. He wasn't going to do anything he wasn't ordered to do.

    "As for you, Boaz — " said Brackman. "I don't know but what a week's latrine duty would maybe teach you something about horseplay with people just out of the hospital."

    Something formless in Unk's memory told Unk to watch the by-play between Brackman and Boaz closely. It was somehow important.

    "A week, Sergeant?" said Boaz.

    "Yes, by God — " said Brackman, and then he shuddered and closed his eyes. Plainly, his antenna had just given him a little stab of pain.

    "A whole week, Sarge?" asked Boaz innocently.

    "A day," said Brackman, and it was less a threat than a question. Again Brackman reacted to pain in his head.

    "Starting when, Sarge?" asked Boaz.

    Brackman fluttered his stubby hands. "Never mind," he said. He looked rattled, betrayed — haunted. He lowered his head, as though better to fight the pain if it came again. "No more horseplay, damn it," he said, his voice deep in his throat. And he hurried away, hurried into his room at the end of the barrack, slammed the door.

    The company commander, a Captain Arnold Burch, came into the barrack for a surprise inspection.

    Boaz was the first to see him. Boaz did what a soldier was supposed to do under such circumstances. Boaz shouted, "A-tennnn-hut!" Boaz did this, though he had no rank at all. It is a freak of military custom that the lowliest private can command his equals and noncommissioned superiors to attention, if he is the first to detect the presence of a commissioned officer in any roofed-over structure not in a combat area.

    The antennas of the enlisted men responded instantly, straightened the men's backs, locked their joints, hauled in their guts, tucked in their butts — made their minds go blank. Unk sprang up from the floor, stood stiff and shivering.

    Only one man was slow about coming to attention. That man was Boaz. And when he did come to attention, there was something insolent and loose and leering about the way he did it.

    Captain Burch, finding Boaz's attitude profoundly offensive, was about to speak to Boaz about it. But the Captain no sooner got his mouth open than pain hit him between the eyes.

    The captain closed his mouth without having made a sound.

    Under the baleful gaze of Boaz, he came smartly to attention, did an about-face, heard a snare drum in his head, and marched out of the barrack in step with the drum.

    When the captain was gone, Boaz did not put his squadmates at ease again, though it was in his power to do so. He had a small control box in his right front trouser pocket that could make his squadmates do just about anything. The box was the size of a one-pint hip flask. Like a hip flask, the box was curved to fit a body curve. Boaz chose to carry it on the hard, curved face of his thigh.

    The control box had six buttons and four knobs on it. By manipulating these, Boaz could control anybody who had an antenna in his skull. Boaz could administer pain in any amount to that anybody — could bring him to attention, could make him hear a snare drum, could make him march, halt, fall in, fall out, safute, attack, retreat, hop, skip, jump . . .

    Boaz had no antenna in his own skull.

    As free as it wanted to be — that's how free the free will of Boaz was.

    Boaz was one of the real commanders of the Army of Mars. He was in command of one-tenth of the force that was to attack the United States of America when the attack, on Earth was mounted. Down the line were units training to attack Russia, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Mexico, China, Nepal, Uruguay. . .

    To the best of Boaz's knowledge, there were eight hundred real commanders of the Army of Mars — not one of them with an apparent rank above buck sergeant. The nominal commander of the entire Army, General of the Armies Borders M. Pulsifer, was in fact controlled at all times by his orderly, Corporal Bert Wright. Corporal Wright, the perfect orderly, carried aspirin for the General's almost chronic headaches.

    The advantages of a system of secret commanders are obvious. Any rebellion within the Army of Mars would be directed against the wrong people. And, in time of war, the enemy could exterminate the entire Martian officer class without disturbing the Army of Mars in the least.

    "Seven hundred and ninety-nine," said Boaz out loud, correcting his own understanding of the number of real commanders. One of the real commanders was dead, having been strangled at the stake by Unk. The strangled man had been Private Stony Stevenson, f ormer real commander of a British attack unit. Stony had become so fascinated by Unk's struggles to understand what was going on that he had begun, unconsciously, to help Unk think.

    Stevenson had suffered the ultimate humiliation for this. An antenna had been installed in his skull, and he had been forced by it to march to the stake like a good soldier — there to await murder by his protégé.

    Boaz let his squadmates go on standing at attention — let them go on quivering, thinking nothing, seeing nothing. Boaz went to Unk's cot, lay down on it with his big, lustrous shoes on the brown blanket. He folded his hands behind his head — arched his body like a bow.

    "Awwwww — " said Boaz, somewhere between a yawn and a groan. "Awwwww — now, men, men, men," he said, letting his mind idle. "God damn, now, men," he said. It was lazy, nonsense talk. Boaz was a little bored with his toys. It occurred to him to have them fight each other — but the penalty for doing that, if he got caught, was the same penalty Stony Stevenson had paid.

    "Awwwww — now, men. Really now, men," said Boaz languidly.

    "God damn it now, men," he said. "I got it made. You men got to admit that. Old Boaz is doing how you might say real fine."

    He rolled off the bed, landed on all fours, sprang to his feet with pantherlike grace. He smiled dazzlingly. He was doing everything he could to enjoy the fortunate position in life that was his. "You boys ain't got it so bad," he said to his rigid squadmates. "You oughta see how we treat the generals, if you think you's bad off." He chuckled and cooed. "Two nights ago us real commanders got ourselves in a argument about which general could run the fastest. Next thing you know, we got all twenty-three generals out of bed; all bare-ass naked, and we lined 'em up like they was race horses, and then we put our money down and laid the odds, and then we sent them generals off like the devil was after 'em. General Stover, he done placed first, with General Harrison right behind him, and with General Mosher behind him. Next morning, ever' general in the Army was stiff as a board. Not one of 'em could remember a thing about the night before."

    Boaz chuckled and cooed again, and then he decided that his fortunate position in life would look a lot better if he treated it seriously — showed what a load it was, showed how honored he felt to have a load like that. He reared back judiciously, hooked his thumbs under his belt and scowled. "Oh," he said, "it ain't all play by any means." He sauntered over to Unk, stood inches away from him, looked him up and down. "Unk, boy — " he said, "I'd hate to tell you how much time I've spent thinking about you — worrying about you, Unk."

    Boaz rocked on his feet. "You will try an' puzzle things out, won't you! You know how many times they had you in the hospital, trying to clean out that memory of yours? Seven times, Unk! You know how many times they usually have to send a man to have his memory cleaned out? Once, Unk. One time!" Boaz snapped his finger under Unk's nose. "And that does it, Unk. One time, and the man never bothers hisself about anything ever after." He shook his head wonderingly. "Not you, though, Unk."

    Unk shuddered.

    "I keeping you at attention too long, Unk?" said Boaz. He gritted his teeth. He couldn't forbear torturing Unk from time to time.

    For one thing, Unk had had everything back on Earth, and Boaz had had nothing.

    For another thing, Boaz was wretchedly dependent on Unk — or would be when they hit Earth. Boaz was an orphan who had been recruited when he was only fourteen — and he didn't have the haziest notion as to how to have a good time on Earth.

    He was counting on Unk to show him how.

    "You want to know who you are — where you come from — what you were?" said Boaz to Unk. Unk was still at attention, thinking nothing, unable to profit from whatever Boaz might tell him. Boaz wasn't talking for

    Unk's benefit anyway. Boaz was reassuring himself about the buddy who was going to be by his side when they hit Earth.

    "Man — " said Boaz, scowling at Unk, "you are one of the luckiest men ever lived. Back there on Earth, man, you were King!"

    Like most pieces of information on Mars, Boaz's pieces of information about Unk were underdeveloped. He could not say from where, exactly, the pieces had come. He had picked them out of the general background noises of army life.

    And he was too good a soldier to go around asking questions, trying to round out his knowledge.

    A soldier's knowledge wasn't supposed to be round. So that Boaz didn't really know anything about Unk except that he had been very lucky once. He embroidered on this.

    "I mean — " said Boaz, "there wasn't anything you couldn't have, wasn't anything you couldn't do, wasn't no place you couldn't go!"

    And while Boaz stressed the marvel of Unk's good luck on Earth, he was expressing a deep concern for another marvel — his superstitious conviction that his own luck on Earth was sure to be rotten.

    Boaz now used three magical words that seemed to describe the maximum happiness a person could achieve on Earth: Hollywood night clubs. He had never seen Hollywood, had never seen a night club. "Man," he said, "you were in and out of Hollywood night clubs all day and all night long.

    "Man," said Boaz to uncomprehending Unk, "you had everything a man needs to really lead hisself a life on Earth, and you knowed how to do it, too.

    "Man," said Boaz to Unk, trying to conceal the pathetic formlessness of his aspirations. "We're going to go into some fine places and order us up some fine things, and circulate and carry on, with some fine people, and just generally have us a good whoop-dee-doo." He seized Unk's arm, rocked him. "Buddies — that's us, buddy. Boy — we're going to be a famous pair — going everywhere, doing everything.

    "'Here comes lucky old Unk and his buddy Boaz!'" said Boaz, saying what he hoped Earthlings would be saying after the conquest. "'And there they go, happy as two birds!'" He chuckled and cooed about the happy, birdlike pair.

    His smile withered.

    His smiles never lasted very long. Somewhere deep inside Boaz was worried sick. He was worried sick about losing his job. It had never been clear to him how he had landed the job — the great privilege. He didn't even know who had given him the swell job.

    Boaz didn't even know who was in command of the real commanders.

    He had never received an order — not from anyone who was superior to the real commanders. Boaz based his actions, as did all the real commanders, on what could be best described as conversational tidbits — tidbits circulated on the real-commander level.

    Whenever the real commanders got together late at night, the tidbits were passed around with the beer and the crackers and cheese.

    There would be a tidbit, for instance, about waste in the supply rooms, and another about the desirability of soldiers' actually getting hurt and mad during jujitsu training, another about soldiers' shabby tendency to skip loops in lacing up their puttees. Boaz himself would pass these on, without any idea as to their point of origin — and he would base his actions on them.

    The execution of Stony Stevenson by Unk had also been announced in this way. Suddenly, it had been the topic of conversation.

    Suddenly, the real commanders had placed Stony under arrest.

    Boaz now fingered the control box in his pocket, without actually touching a control. He took his place among the men he controlled, came to attention voluntarily, pressed a button, and relaxed as his squadmates relaxed.

    He wanted a drink of hard liquor very much. And be was entitled to liquor, too, whenever he wanted it. Unlimited supplies of all kinds of liquor were flown in from Earth regularly for the real commanders. And the officers could have all the liquor they wanted, too, though they couldn't get the good stuff. What the officers drank was a lethal green liquor made locally out of fermented lichens.

    But Boaz never drank. One reason he didn't drink was that he was afraid that alcohol would impair his efficiency as a soldier. Another reason he didn't drink was that he was afraid that he would forget himself and offer an enlisted man a drink.

    The penalty for a real commander who offered an enlisted man an alcoholic beverage was death.

    "Yes, Lord," said Boaz, adding his voice to the hubbub of the relaxing men.

    Ten minutes later, Sergeant Brackman declared a recreation period, during which everyone was supposed to go out and play German batball, the chief sport of the Army of Mars.

    Unk stole away.

    Unk stole away to barrack 12 to look for the letter under the blue rock — the letter that his red-headed victim had told him about.

    The barracks in the area were empty.

    The banner at the head of the mast before them was thin air.

    The empty barracks had been the home of a battalion of Martian Imperial Commandos. The Commandos had disappeared quietly in the dead of night a month before. They had taken off in their space ships, their faces blackened, their dog tags taped so as not to clink — their destination secret.

    The Martian Imperial Commandos were experts at killing sentries with loops of piano wire.

    Their secret destination was the Earthling moon. They were going to start the war there.

    Unk found a big blue stone outside the furnace room of barrack twelve. The stone was a turquoise. Turquoises are very common on Mars. The turquoise Unk found was a flagstone a foot across.

    Unk looked under it. He found an aluminum cylinder with a screw cap. Inside the cylinder was a very long letter written in pencil.

    Unk did not know who had written it. He was in poor shape for guessing, since he knew the names of only three people — Sergeant Brackman, Boaz, and Unk.

    Unk went into the furnace room and closed the door. He was excited, though he didn't know why. He began to read by the light from the dusty window. Dear Unk: — the letter began.

    Dear Unk: — the letter began: They aren't much, God knows — but here are the things I know for sure, and at. the end you will find a list of questions you should do your best to find answers to. The questions are important. I have thought harder about them than I have about the answers I already have. That is the first thing I know for sure: (1.) If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.

    All the things that the writer knew for sure were numbered, as though to emphasize the painful, stepby-step nature of the game of finding things out for sure. There were one hundred and fifty-eight things the writer knew for sure. There had once been one hundred and eighty-five, but seventeen had been crossed off.

    The second item was, (2.) I am a thing called alive.

    The third was, (3.) I am in a place called Mars.

    The fourth was, (4.) I am in a part of a thing called an army.

    The fifth was, (5.) The army plans to kill other things called alive in a place called Earth.

    Of the first eighty-one items, not one was crossed out. And, in the first eight .one items, the writer progressed to subtler and subtler matters, and mistakes grew more numerous.

    Boaz was explained and dismissed by the writer very early in the game.

    (46.) Watch out for Boaz, Unk. He is not what he seems.

    (47.) Boaz has something in his right-hand pocket that hurts people in the head when they do something Boaz doesn't like.

    (48.) Some other people have things that can hurt you in the head, too. You can't tell by looking who has one, so be sweet to everybody.

    (71.) Unk, old friend — almost everything I know for sure has come from fighting the pain from my antenna, said the letter to Unk. Whenever I start to turn my head and look at something, and the pain comes, I keep turning my head anyway, because I know I am going to see something I'm not supposed to see. Whenever I ask a question, and the pain comes, I know I have asked a really good question. Then I break the question into little pieces, and I ask the pieces of the questions. Then I get answers to the pieces, and then I put the answers all together and get an answer to the big question.

    (72.) The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn. You are afraid of the pain now, Unk, but you won't learn anything if you don't invite the pain. And the more you learn, the gladder you will be to stand the pain.

    There in the furnace room of the empty barrack, Unk laid the letter aside for a moment. He felt like crying, for the heroic writer's faith in Unk was misplaced. Unk knew he couldn't stand a fraction of the pain the writer had stood — couldn't possibly love knowledge that much.

    Even the little sample twinge they had given him in the hospital had been excruciating. He gulped air now, like a fish dying on a riverbank, remembering the big pain Boaz had slammed him with in the barrack. He would rather die than risk another pain like that.

    His eyes watered.

    If he had tried to speak, he would have sobbed.

    Poor Unk didn't want any trouble from anybody ever again. Whatever information he gained from the letter — information gained by another man's heroism — he would use to avoid any more pain.

    Unk wondered if there were people who could stand more pain than others. He supposed this was the case. He supposed tearfully that he was especially sensitive in this regard. Without wishing the writer any harm, Unk wished the writer could feel, just once, the pains as Unk felt them.

    Then maybe the writer would address his letters to someone else.

    Unk had no way of judging the quality of the information contained in the letter. He accepted it all hungrily, uncritically. And, in accepting it, Unk gained an understanding of life that was identical with the writer's understanding of life. Unk wolfed down a philosophy.

    And mixed in with the philosophy were gossip, history, astronomy, biology, theology, geography, psychology, medicine — and even a short story.

    Some random examples:

    Gossip:(22.) General Borders is drunk all the time, He is so drunk he can't even tie his shoelaces so they will stay tied. Officers are as mixed up and unhappy as anybody. You used to be one, Unk, with a battalion all your own.

    History:(26.) Everybody on Mars came from Earth. They thought they would be better off on Mars. Nobody can remember what was so bad about Earth.

    Astronomy:(11.) Everything in the whole sky revolves around Mars once a day.

    Biology:(58.) New people come out of women when men and women sleep together. New people hardly ever come out of women on Mars because the men and the women sleep in different places.

    Theology:(15.) Somebody made everything for some reason.

    Geography:(16.) Mars is round. The only city on it is called Phoebe. Nobody knows why it is called Phoebe.

    Psychology:(103.) Unk, the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.

    Medicine:(73.) When they clean out a man's memory on this place called Mars, they don't really clean it completely. They lust clean out the middle of it, sort of. They always leave a lot of stuff in the corners. There is a story around about how they tried cleaning out a few memories completely. The poor people who had that done to them couldn't walk, couldn't talk, couldn't do anything. The only thing anybody could think of to do with them was to housebreak them, teach them a basic vocabulary of a thousand words, and give them jobs in military or industrial public relations.

    The short story: (89.) Unk, your best friend is Stony Stevenson. Stony is a big, happy, strong man, and he drinks a quart of whisky a day. Stony doesn't have an antenna in his head, and he can remember everything that ever happened to him. He pretends to be an intelligence scout, but he is one of the real commanders. He radio-controls a company of assault infantrymen who are going to attack a place on Earth called England. Stony is from England. Stony likes the Army of Mars because there is so much to laugh about. Stony laughs all the time. He heard what an eightball you were, Unk, so he came over to your barrack to have a look at you. He pretended he was a friend of yours, so he could hear you talk. After a while, you got to trust him, Unk, and you told him some of your secret theories about what life on Mars was all about. Stony tried to laugh, but then he realized that you had turned up some things that he didn't know anything about. He couldn't get over it, because he was supposed to know everything, and you weren't supposed to know anything. And then you told Stony a lot of the big questions you wanted answered, and Stony knew the answers to only about half of them. And Stony went back to his barrack, and the questions he didn't know the answers to kept going around and around in his head. He couldn't sleep that night, even though he drank and drank and drank. He was catching on that somebody was using him, and he didn't have any idea who it was. He didn't even know why there had to be an Army of Mars in the first place. He didn't even know why Mars was going to attack Earth. And the more he remembered about Earth, the more he realized that the Army of Mars didn't have the chance of a snowball in hell. The big attack on Earth would be suicide for sure. Stony wondered who he could talk to about this, and there just wasn't anybody but you, Unk. So Stony staggered out of bed about an hour before sunrise, and he sneaked in your barrack, Unk, and he woke you up. He told you everything about Mars he knew. And he said that from now on he would tell you every bloody thing he found out, and you were supposed to tell him every bloody thing you found out. And every so often you two would get off somewhere and try to fit things together. And he gave you a bottle of whisky. And you both drank from it, and Stony said you were his best bloody friend. He said you, were the only bloody friend he had ever had on Mars, even though he laughed all the time, and he cried, and almost woke up people around your bunk. He told you to watch out for Boaz, and then he went back to his barrack and slept like a baby.

    The letter, from the point of the short story on, was proof of the effectiveness of the secret observation team of Stony Stevenson and Unk. From that point on, the things known for sure in the letter were almost all introduced by phrases like: Stony says — and You found out — and Stony told you — and You told Stony — and You and Stony got roaring drunk out on the rifle range one night, and you two crazy bums decided —

    The most important thing that the two crazy bums decided was that the man who was in actual command of everything on Mars was a big, genial, smiling, yodeling man who always had a big dog with him. This man and his dog, according to the letter to Unk, appeared at secret meetings of the real commanders of the Army of Mars about once every hundred days.

    The letter said nothing about it, because the writer knew nothing about it, but this man and his dog were Winston Niles Rumfoord and Kazak, the hound of space. And their appearances on Mars were not irregular. Being chrono-synclastic infundibulated, Rumfoord and Kazak appeared as predictably as Halley's Comet. They appeared on Mars once every one hundred and eleven days.

    As the letter to Unk said, (155.) According to Stony, this big guy and his dog show up at the meetings, and just snow everybody under. He is a big charm boy, and by the time a meeting is over everybody is trying to think just exactly the way he thinks. Every idea anybody has comes from him. He just smiles and smiles and yodels and yodels in that fancy voice of his, and fills everybody up with new ideas. And then all the people at the meeting pass around the ideas as though they had thought them up themselves. He is crazy about the game of German batball. Nobody knows what his name is. He just laughs, if anybody asks him. He usually wears the uniform of the Parachute Ski Marines, but the real commanders of the Parachute Ski Marines swear they've never seen him anywhere but at the secret meetings.

    (156.) Unk, old pal, said the letter to Unk, every time you and Stony find out something new, add it on to this letter. Keep this letter well hidden. And every time you change its hiding place, be sure to tell Stony where you put it. That way, even if you go to the hospital to have your memory cleaned out, Stony can tell you where to go to have your memory filled up again.

    (157.) Unk — you know why you keep on going? You keep on going because you have a mate and a child. Almost nobody on Mars has either one. Your mate's name is Bee. She is an instructress at the Schliemann Breathing School in Phoebe. Your son's name is Chrono. He lives in the grade school in Phoebe. According to Stony Stevenson, Chrono is the best German batball player in the school. Like everybody else on Mars, Bee and Chrono have learned to get along all alone. They don't miss you. They never think of you. But you have to prove to them that they need you in the biggest way possible.

    (158.) Unk, you crazy son-of -a-bitch, I love you. I think you are the cat's pajamas. When you get this little family of yours together, swipe a space ship and go flying away to somewhere peaceful and beautiful, some place where you don't have to take goof balls all the time to stay alive. Take Stony with you. And when you get settled down, all of you spend a lot of time trying to figure out why whoever made everything went and made it.

    All that remained for Unk to read of the letter was the signature.

    The signature was on a separate page.

    Before turning to the signature, Unk tried to imagine the character and appearance of the writer. The writer was fearless. The writer was such a lover of truth that he would expose himself to any amount of pain in order to add to his store of truth. He was superior to Unk and Stony. He watched and recorded their subversive activities with love, amusement, and detachment.

    Unk imagined the writer as being a marvelous old man with a white beard and the build of a blacksmith.

    Unk turned the page and read the signature.

    I remain faithfully yours — was the sentiment expressed above the signature.

    The signature itself filled almost the whole page. It was three block letters, six inches high and two inches wide. The letters were executed clumsily, with a smeary black kindergarten exuberance.

    This was the signature:

    The signature was Unk's.

    Unk was the hero who had written the letter.

    Unk had written the letter to himself before having his memory cleaned out. It was literature in its finest sense, since it made Unk courageous, watchful, and secretly free. It made him his own hero in very trying times.

    Unk did not know that the man he had murdered at the stake was his best friend, was Stony Stevenson. Had he known that, he might have killed himself. But Fate spared him that awful knowledge for many years.

    When Unk got back to his barrack, jungle knives and bayonets were being honed with harsh screescraws. Everyone was sharpening a blade.

    And everywhere were sheepish smiles of a peculiar sort. The smiles spoke of sheep who, under proper conditions, could commit murder gladly.

    Orders had just been received that the regiment was to proceed with all possible haste to its space ships.

    The war with Earth had begun.

    Advance units of the Martian Imperial Commandos had already obliterated Earthling installations on the Earthling moon. The Commando rocket batteries, firing from the moon, were now giving every major city a taste of hell.

    And, as dinner music for those tasting hell, Martian radios were beaming this message to Earth in a maddening sing-song:

    Brown man, white man, yellow man — surrender or die.

    Brown man, white man, yellow man — surrender or die.