Cyberpunk (15 page)

zipper.

Then he stopped cold, looked down, cracked a smirk—

“Not again,” I whispered.

Pizza Face grabbed my chin, tilted my head back so he could look

me right in the eye, and smiled nasty. “What happened, boy?” he asked,

quiet. “Some dog mistake your feet for a tree?”

That did it!
I stomped down hard on somebody’s instep; I wriggled,

I kicked, I spun; I don’t know how I did it but suddenly I was free and

looking straight down my arm as my skinny fist zeroed right in on Pizza

Face’s big zit-covered nose! I think I even screamed something fierce

right out of
Seven Blades for the Dragon
!

I don’t know how Pizza Face did it, either. All I know is that one

moment my fist was six inches away from his nose and dead on course,

and then a nano later I was punching empty air. Pizza Face grabbed my

wrist as it went past, helped my spin along with a tug, gave me a sidefoot

kick in the back of the knee.

What I do know is that it hurt. A
lot
. I started to go down. He put

more pressure on my knee to make sure I kept going. When I could

focus again I was lying on the floor, flat on my back, and Pizza Face was

crouching over me. I could see his nametag, clear. His name was

Rogers. Roid Rogers.

Rogers kneeled down, so he could shove his left shoulder in my

face, and growled, “Cute stunt, candy-ass.” His face was turning bright

red, making his zits look like sunspots on Betelgeuse. I tried to get up.

He pushed me back down again, hard.

“You see this, candy ass?” he said, pointing at the knotted black

cord stuck on his shoulder. “This means I’m a Cadet, Grade Four. You

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know what that means? It means I can beat the piss out of you any time I

feel like it.”

“Hey Rogers,” the guy with the detex was saying, “ease up on the

kid, okay?”

“And now, to make sure that you remember this lesson,” Rogers

growled, leaving the sentence hanging in the air. He made a fist with his

right hand, drew it back like a pinball launcher, and gave me one last

evil smile.

“Cadet Rogers,” Payne said in a loud, deep voice. I didn’t know he’d

come into the room. Neither, apparently, had Rogers. He let his fist drop,

stood, and turned, hangdog, to face Payne.

“Yessir?”

“Are you having a problem handling this recruit, Rogers?”

“Nossir.”

“Very well. Proceed.” Payne crossed his arms and made it clear he

planned to stay in that room a good long time. Rogers turned back to me,

deep anger smoking in his eyes.

“The detex operator has found a suspect article,” he said. “Will you

surrender it voluntarily?” After a mo, I realized he was talking to me.

I thought it over, brief. “Sure.” I reached down into my inside

pocket and pulled out the Starfire. Didn’t take real genius to see that if I

was going to get it and myself out of the room in one piece, it’d be while

Payne was watching.

Ham-hands took it from me. He flipped up the wafer display,

unfolded the keyboard, and turned it over. “It appears to be a pocket

calculator,” he told Rogers. He opened the battery door, saw the ni-cads

soldered in place, and closed it again. “Harmless.”

Rogers stayed silent a minute too long. “Is this a contraband item?”

Payne prompted, loud.

“Nossir,” Rogers answered, looking at the ceiling like he was
so

bored. “Weapons, drugs, and pornography are contraband, sir.”

“And what do we do with items that are not contraband?”

“All other items are to be respected as the cadet’s personal property,

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sir
.”

“Very good, Cadet Rogers. I’ll take him from here.” Ham-hands

returned my Starfire, and I walked shaky out the doorway on the other

side of the room and into a hallway. Payne followed, and closed the door

behind us.

I know, I know, I should have been derzky, sullen. Sometimes it’s

just a little hard to keep the gratitude thing choked down, y’know? In the

hallway I stopped, turned. “Thanks, Mr. Payne—sir! I thought sure he

was... “

Payne grabbed me by the front of my jumpsuit and held me two

inches off his nose. “Look here, pissant,” he growled, “you know why I

stopped Rogers? Because beating you up is
my
job!” He slammed me

against the wall. “Now get your ass in gear, pissant! You’re late!” With

a kick, he got me started down the hallway. Then he went back into the

room where Rogers was and started into some major yelling.

I got my ass in gear. The next stop down the hallway was the

storeroom, where they fit me out with some ugly, baggy, flat-green

clothes, some heavy black boots that lost their shine the instant I touched

them, and a toothbrush and soap and all that. They let me keep my

jumpsuit, though, and my watch and my Starfire, but near as I could tell

Mom’s green tourister suitcase —and whatever was in it—got

vaporized.

After that came the haircut; they hauled out the hedge trimmers, and

my black horsemane hit the floor right next to a pile of electric blue

spikes. Then they took all our clothes back again, and ran us through

some icewater showers, and we got a cursory scan from the camp

doctor, who made sure we were all not crawling with bugs and still

breathing at least some of the time. And
then
...

By the time we finally got to the mess hall, the Little Hitlers had had

their swastika tattoos laser-bleached out, the Butthole Skinheads had lost

their steel-toed boots and suspenders, and me, Scott, the other McPunk,

and the Style Statement boy had all been shaved bald. This had me

burning, until I saw the Lance Stallone clones.

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

They were shaved bald, too, and they’d traded in their pricey camo

gore-tex and designer boots for the same ugly flat-greens the rest of us

were wearing. There
is
justice in the universe.

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Chapter 0/A

Lunch, when we got it, was this shredded, pink, meatlike substance

drowned in some kind of lumpy white sauce or gravy, ladled over a slab

of soggy brown toast, with some runny orange mush that might have

been carrots once on the side and a chocolate brownie about the size of

my thumbnail for desert. By the time I got through the serving line

everyone else was sitting down and making with lots of real gross jokes

about what the stuff looked like and what it should be called, but I didn’t

care. I was hungry, and I ate it, and it wasn’t half bad. So I asked Scott if

I could trade him my brownie for his plateful, and he said okay, which

got a couple guys calling me Disposal Breath, but I got a kind of feeble

last laugh on them ‘cause they were all still pushing it around their

plates and flipping forkfuls of it at each other when Payne came

charging into the mess hall and brayed, “Fall in!”

The jarheads jumped to their feet. I figured they knew what they

were doing so I jumped, too. Scott was too obvious being casual about

getting up, so Payne grabbed him by the back of his shirt, hauled him to

his feet, and sort of launched him overhand in the general direction of

the group.

Everyone else fell in real fast.

“Ten-
shun
! Rye
face
! Ford
harch
!” I watched the jarheads again and

faked the motions okay. We went tromping out of the mess hall—

“
HALT!
” The line jerked to a stop, bodies colliding, people falling

down. I looked around to see what the glitch was and flagged some poor

kid back at the end of the line had tried to drop out and snag a public

domain brownie. He was standing over by a table, frozen like a statue,

the brownie in his hand and the most guilty look I have ever seen on his

face.

Payne glared at the kid like he was trying to melt him down by psi.

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“You! Pissant! Front and center!”

The kid turned around, face drooping, and shuffled over to stand in

front of Payne. “Ten-
shun
!” The kid snapped rigid. Payne’s face went a

shade darker. “You call that
attention?
” The kid tried again, squeezing

so tight I thought his eyeballs would pop.

Hands on his hips, angry red scowl on his bulldog face, Payne did an

orbit about the kid, looking him up, looking him down, down, down.

Stopped walking. Bulled in six inches away from his face. “
What’s your

name, pissant?
”

“Lester Jankowicz,” the kid mumbled.

Payne snapped forward like a striking snake. Two inches. “Lester

Jankowicz
WHAT
?”

“Lester Jankowicz,
sir
.” Now that I’d been looking at him awhile, I

flagged he was the stringy-haired chemhead I saw on the turboprop.

Funny, he didn’t look so flakey and skeletal thin now that he was shaved

bald and wearing baggy greens.

Payne smiled a little, backed off. “So, Jankowicz, you like

chocolate?”

Jankowicz relaxed, shrugged, grinned idiotic. “Yes, sir. Like I kinda

got the munchies, if you know—”

Payne exploded. “Your name is
not
Lester Jankowicz! From now on

your name is
Piggy
!” Jankowicz’ lopsided grin collapsed like his face

was made of melting Play-Doh. Payne bored in for the kill, his voice low

and mean. “Now, what is your
name
, pissant?”

“Les—,” Jankowicz froze. His voice dropped to near whisper. “Uh,

Piggy, sir.”

“What’s that?”

Jankowicz closed his eyes, fought back what looked like the start of

tears, raised his voice. “Piggy, sir!”

“Very good!” Payne looked around, spotted two Grade Fours, waved

them over and pointed to Jankowicz. “Piggy here wants to finish all of

the leftover brownies. You will see that he does.” The Grade Fours

saluted crisp, snapped out their ‘yessirs’ is perfect sync, took Jankowicz

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by the arms and led him off. Then Payne turned back to the rest of us.

“Ten-
shun
! Rye
face
! Ford
harch
!”

In the confusion, Scott managed to position himself behind me in the

line. “D’ja see that, dude?” he whispered. “They’re gonna make Piggy

eat all the leftover brownies. If that’s torture, chain me to the wall!”

I shook my head, just a twitch. “I dunno, Scott. This Payne

character’s more subtle than he looks.”

“Still, dude, you just watch me tonight at supper—”

“Will you two
shut up
?” the guy behind Scott whispered. “You

wanna get us all in trouble?”

I was still processing my answer to that when Payne came quickmarching

by, giving us all the hairy eyeball.

#

We marched out of the mess hall, down the track and around the end