Starship Troopers

"I wanted the M. I. and I got it!" he said emphatically. "And I'm no older than many sergeants -- not as old, in fact. Son, the mere fact that I am twenty-two years older than you are doesn't put me in a wheel chair. And age has its advantages, too."

Well, there was something in that. I recalled how Sergeant Zim had always tried the older men first, when he was dealing out boot chevrons. And Father would never have goofed in Basic the way I had—no lashes for him. He was probably spotted as non-com material before he ever finished Basic. The Army needs a lot of really grown-up men in the middle grades; it's a paternalistic organization.

I didn't have to ask him why he had wanted M. I., nor why or how he had wound up in my ship—I just felt warm about it, more ‘flattered by it than any praise he had ever given me in words. And I didn't want to ask him why he had joined up; I felt that I knew. Mother. Neither of us had mentioned her—too painful.

So I changed the subject abruptly. "Bring me up to date. Tell me where you've been and what you've done."

"Well, I trained at Camp San Martin—"

"Huh? Not Currie?"

"New one. But the same old lumps, I understand. Only they rush you through two months faster, you don't get Sundays off. Then I requested the Rodger Young -- and didn't get it -- and wound up in McSlattery's Volunteers. A good outfit."

"Yes, I know." They had had a reputation for being rough, tough, and nasty—almost as good as the Roughnecks.

"I should say that it was a good outfit. I made several drops with them and some of the boys bought it and after a while I got these." He glanced at his chevrons. "I was a corporal when we dropped on Sheol—"

"You were there? So was I!" With a sudden warm flood of emotion I felt closer to my father than I ever had before in my life.

"I know. At least I knew your outfit was there. I was around fifty miles north of you, near as I can guess. We soaked up that counterattack when they came boiling up out of the ground like bats out of a cave." Father shrugged. "So when it was over I was a corporal without an outfit, not enough of us left to make a healthy cadre. So they sent me here. I could have gone with King's Kodiak Bears, but I had a word with the placement sergeant—and, sure as sunrise, the Rodger Young came back with a billet for a corporal. So here I am."

"And when did you join up?" I realized that it was the wrong remark as soon as I had made it—but I had to get the subject away from McSlattery's Volunteers; an orphan from a dead outfit wants to forget it.

Father said quietly, "Shortly after Buenos Aires."

"Oh. I see."

Father didn't say anything for several moments. Then he said softly,

"I'm not sure that you do see, Son."

"Sir?"

"Mmm... it will not be easy to explain. Certainly, losing your mother had a great deal to do with it. But I didn't enroll to avenge her—even though I had that in mind, too. You had more to do with it—"

"Me?"

"Yes, you. Son, I always understood what you were doing better than your mother did—don't blame her; she never had a chance to know, any more than a bird can understand swimming. And perhaps I knew why you did it, even though I beg to doubt that you knew yourself, at the time. At least half of my anger at you was sheer resentment... that you had actually done something that I knew, buried deep in my heart, I should have done. But you weren't the cause of my joining up, either... you merely helped trigger it and you did control the service I chose."

He paused. "I wasn't in good shape at the time you enrolled. I was seeing my hypnotherapist pretty regularly—you never suspected that, did you? -- but we had gotten no farther than a clear recognition that I was enormously dissatisfied. After you left, I took it out on you—but it was not you, and I knew it and my therapist knew it. I suppose I knew that there was real trouble brewing earlier than most; we were invited to bid on military components fully a month before the state of emergency was announced. We had converted almost entirely to war production while you were still in training.

"I felt better during that period, worked to death and too busy to see my therapist. Then I became more troubled than ever." He smiled. "Son, do you know about civilians?"

"Well... we don't talk the same language. I know that."

"Clearly enough put. Do you remember Madame Ruitman? I was on a few days leave after I finished Basic and I went home. I saw some of our friends, said good-by—she among them. She chattered away and said, ‘So you're really going out? Well, if you reach Faraway, you really must look up my dear friends the Regatos.' "

"I told her, as gently as I could, that it seemed unlikely, since the Arachnids had occupied Faraway.

"It didn't faze her in the least. She said, ‘Oh, that's all right— they're civilians!' " Father smiled cynically.

"Yes, I know."