Authors: Bruce Bethke
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
Cyberpunk 1.0
77
©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke
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,
Cyberpunk 1.0
78
©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke
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.
Cyberpunk 1.0
79
©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.
Cyberpunk 1.0
80
©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.
Cyberpunk 1.0
81
©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke
“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
Cyberpunk 1.0
82
©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke
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