"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 p.o.r.nography 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,78 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 grat.i.tude 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, p.i.s.sant," he growled, "you know why I stopped Rogers? Because beating you up is my job!" He slammed me against the wall. "Now get your a.s.s in gear, p.i.s.sant! 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 a.s.s 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 b.u.t.thole 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.79 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.80

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.81 "You! p.i.s.sant! 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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, p.i.s.sant?"

"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, p.i.s.sant?"

"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 Jankowicz82 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 of the field, up along a row of identical ugly green prefab bunkhouses, eventual coming to a stop in front of one. Which was good, 'cause by then Scott was starting to make with little robot 'boop' and 'beep' noises and Payne looked like he was getting suspicious. Payne called out "Column halt!" and we sort of piled to a stop. He yelled "Ten-shun!"

and we all snapped to. He clasped hands behind his back and walked down the line slow, looking us over with a cold, unreadable glare. At the end of the line he turned around, stopped. Took a deep breath.

"Welcome to the Von Schlager Military Academy!" he boomed out.

"As of this second, your old life is over! I don't care who you were yesterday, or what you did before you came here! Starting right now, you are Serial Two-Oh-Three! You are a team! And in the next twelve weeks we are going to teach you a little bit about what it means to be a team of men!" He paused, looked down, bit his lower lip.

"This bunkhouse is your new home! Bunks and bedding are inside, as are cleaning supplies. It is up to you to make Serial Two-Oh-Three's bunkhouse spotless! Inspection will be at sixteen hundred hours, with official orientation to begin immediately thereafter!" He paused again, took another deep breath.83 "So tell me, who are you?"

A couple of us started to mumble our discrete names, but all the jarheads together yelled out, "Serial Two-Oh-Three!"

"What's that?"

A little better sync this time. "Serial Two-Oh-Three."

"I can't hear you!"

Geez, even I joined in. "Serial Two-Oh-Three!"

Payne leaned back a little, grinned or maybe bared his teeth, cracked off a salute like a karate chop. "Dis mist!" Pivoting on a heel, he turned and marched away. The jarheads broke into a mad scramble for the bunkhouse door.

Me and Scott sagged, turned slow, looked at each other with big dumb surprise playing all over our faces. "That's it?" I said, all total amazement. "We're free?" Okay Mikey, at last, some s.p.a.ce to think!

Let's start working on the escape plan!

Step one: Get my Starfire back, and find an open node, and jack in, and... and what? Just where the h.e.l.l am I, anyway?

Step one, revised: Figure out which trail leads out to the highway, and...

I looked around the field. Trees. Tall pine trees, stretching on forever. Underbrush like a thick green wall, coming right up to the edge of the Academy.

Right. Step one, rev 3.0/ : Find a road, or trail, or something.

I was still hacking through permutations on step one when the light bulb flashed on over Scott's head.

"Bunk beds!"

Shiite! He took off running; I followed, but too late. By the time we figured out there was a back door and went around that way, all the bottom bunks were taken, and most of the top ones, too. Scott wound up with an upper bunk over by the back windows-well, they weren't windows, really; more like big rectangular holes in the walls, with mosquito netting on the inside and heavy wooden shutters on the outside, propped open with sticks-and I got the upper bunk just inside84 the front door, right over some sullen, silent guy with an oily dark complexion and a big nose. There was this major notch in the bunk frame where the door hit every time it swung open.

That was the least of my problems. Fact is, calling that thing a bed was pure pravda. Torture rack, more likely; made out of slick greenpainted two-by-fours; slapped together with big Frankenstein-type bolt heads sticking out all over; no spring, no mattress, no nothing, just a flat plywood slab with little wood rails around the edges to keep me from falling out. I climbed up, sat on the bunk with my feet dangling over the side, scanned around to see what the other kids were doing.

Okay, the lumpy green thing squatting at the other end wasn't a pillow, it was an anorexic futon. I unrolled it. The true pillows (green again) were all piled on some shelves down at the far end of the bunkhouse, next to a stack of (green) blankets and a mountain of (surprise!) white sheets. A bunch of the jarheads, being instinctive good little worker ants, were already starting up a distribution chain.

Fine. I could use sheets and a blanket. But when Deke Luger came over with a mop in his hands and a big, dumb grin on his freckled face...

"Yo! Cyberpunk! Y'all know how to interface with one of these?"

He threw the mop to me two-handed, like it was a gun. Reflexive, I caught it.

One of Deke's buddies brought over the bucket and jumped in on the fun. "Careful y'all don't get splinters up your b.u.t.t when you jack in!" He started laughing and hooting like it was the funniest joke in the entire history of the known universe. That got everybody in the bunkhouse looking our way.

Deke kicked the frame of the lower bunk. "An' you, y'lazy greaseball! Juan, or Ree-car-do, or whatever th' h.e.l.l your--"

"My name," the guy in the lower bunk said in a raw, angry voice, "is Lawrence Borec, dips.h.i.t."

Deke grinned even dumber and wider. "Is that th' Charleston Borec- Dips.h.i.ts or th' Raleigh Borec-Dip- WHAM! Borec sort of uncoiled off the bunk and went headfirst into85 Deke's midsection. Luger staggered back and tried to swing a wild punch; Borec clamped arms around Luger's waist, hooked a foot behind his leg, and threw him down. A nano later they were rolling across the wood floor, cussing and clawing, kicking dust up to hang dancing in the slanty afternoon sunlight. Somebody screamed, "Fight! Fight!"

Everybody in the bunkhouse came charging over to see.

Luger rolled face up. He got his right hand free, got in a couple short, hard punches on Borec's ribs. The jarheads cheered. "Get 'im, Deke!" "Whup his greasy a.s.s, Deke!"

Borec was obvious better at wrestling; he ignored the punches and flipped Deke over like a rag doll. Something whacked the floor hard.

"Ow!" The next time Luger's face came up he had blood running out the nose.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Somebody tried to kick at Borec. "Fight fair, greaser!" Borec rolled and threw Deke over again; fat red drops went arcing graceful through the air and splattered like thick red oil. "Deke!"

Two jarheads started pushing people aside to clear room to stomp on Borec.

"STOP!".

Amazing enough, everyone did. I turned around to see Payne come thundering right into the middle of the fight, grab Borec by the collar and the seat of the pants, lift him off the floor and shake him 'til he let go of Luger.

Deke sat up, clamped a hand over his b.l.o.o.d.y nose. "Thir! Thith greather--"

"SHUT UP!".

One of Deke's buddies tried to jump in. "Sir! Borec threw the first- ".

"SHUT UP!" Payne swung Borec around and lobbed him in the general direction of the front door, then grabbed Deke by the collar and hauled him to his feet. "You two, outside!" He gave Deke a hard shove that sent him staggering.

Spinning around, Payne caught us all in a single glare. "The rest of86 you, break it up! Back to work!" He speared me with a glare. "You, with the mop! Get down here and get this blood cleaned up!" Storming out the door, he caught Luger with one hand, Borec with the other, started frogmarching them away. Luger whined something I couldn't quite hear.

"I don't care who started it! You fight when I give you permission to fight! Understood?"

Whine, whine.

"I can't hear you!"

And so on. The crowd broke up, grumbling about how that crummy greaser didn't fight fair and Deke woulda whupped him if Payne hadn't a showed up and bulls.h.i.t that greaser had Deke cold and oh yeah you wanna put money on it? and all that kinda stuff. Payne's yelling tapered off in the distance. I jumped down from my bunk, started looking around for the bucket.

Great. Just fritzin' great. What a peer group. Twenty junior jarheads and a bunch of violent psychotics. I couldn't wait 'til I found a phone.

But until then, pretend to go with the flow.

I dunked the mop in the bucket, slopped some water on the floor, started scrubbing.

Scott wandered by, stopped, stood right where I was trying to mop.

"Wow, dude. D'ja see that? Like, what happened, anyway?"