"Sir, how can we learn to operate as a warbot if we're not-bottled?"

"You'll find out. You'll probably enjoy it." He grinned. "It won't require running up Drag Ass Hill."

He pointed at another hand. "Yes, Recruit Harrison?"

The young man's voice was subdued and tentative. "Where do we, uh, sign the agreement, sir? To get bottled if we're crippled or dying?"

"Right after supper, at the orderly room. Sergeant Henkel or Corporal Tsinijinnie will sign you up." He scanned the room and saw no sign of enthusiasm. "Or at some later time. The sooner we know, the better." Again he looked around. "Any more questions? Cochran?"

"Sir, you said we'd see cubeage of how warbots are made, and watch one of them get interviewed."

"Right. That comes next. Corporal Cavalieri, continue with the cube."

B Company was introverted when it left the lecture shed, but the condition was not allowed to persist. Captain Mulvaney had prearranged for that. Outside, they were ordered to drop down and this time pump out thirty-five. Even Recruit Vernon managed thirty-two. Then Sergeant Fossberg led them on a gallop to the Physical Training Area, where they spent a long Luneburgian hour and forty minutes deeply in touch with the physical universe-gravity, dirt, fatigue and pain. Afterward they trotted back to the company area by a roundabout, nearly hour-long route, chanting from time to time, to disrupt their breathing cadence. They arrived at their hutment sweating profusely, and were dismissed for showers, dry clothes, and a layabout before supper, mostly napping.

After supper but before evening muster, exactly five trainees showed up at the orderly room to sign agreements. If they were severely disabled or mortally injured, and unconscious, the army was authorized to "extract the undersigned's central nervous system, and install it into an interfacing module for installation in a servomechanism, to serve as a cyborg of a model, and in a military unit, deemed appropriate by the army."

B Company's platoon sergeants had been allowed to choose their own site for their evening session. Sergeant First Class Arjin Hawkins Singh had chosen a field training site less than a mile from their hutment. There they found a platoon-size bleachers, with trees shading it from the lowering sun. Some second-level cadreman had delivered a folding chair to the site, for Hawkins, to help this seem like a conversation instead of a lecture.

The Jerries had been brought up to disdain war, and according to the briefing handbook on Jerrie ethnology, they put great stock in showing respect to the bodies of the dead, who presumably would be watching. On the other hand, the afternoon's training cube had rubbed their noses in their mortality, and the prospects of being killed or maimed would be more real now. And if five volunteers fell short of a landslide, it seemed to Hawkins that the bonding among the trainees, and their psychological identification with their regiments, would strengthen with time, and make a difference. A shortage of agreements now didn't necessarily mean they'd be lacking when the casualties began on New Jerusalem.

At any rate, Division, Regiment, and Mulvaney wanted this to be a relaxed and intimate discussion.

The trainees sensed that this would not be another training lecture. For one thing, their sergeant hadn't ordered them to give him thirty or thirty-five pushups before seating them.

Hawkins didn't begin with the usual "at ease" to shut them up. He simply asked, "What did you think of the training cube this afternoon?" When no one volunteered a comment, he pointed. "How about you, Abner?"

It took Abner McReynolds a moment to react. No cadreman had ever addressed him by his given name before. It distracted him enough, he even forgot to address Hawkins as "sergeant."

"Those warbots were something to watch," he said. "I can see why the army wants us to volunteer."

Hawkins nodded. McReynolds didn't sound like someone deeply perturbed by the request. "I'm signing up myself," Hawkins told them. "As soon as we get back in." He looked around, then pointed at Esau Wesley. "Esau, what did you think about the training cube?"

"Sergeant, the thing that struck me most was all the bodies, all the dead and wounded. I knew all along a person could get killed fighting in a war, but seeing it like that made it a lot more real to me. Those pulses don't pick and choose. If you're in the way, you're a deader. Wounded at least. It doesn't matter if you're the toughest man in the company."

"Good observation. Isaiah, what have you got to say?"

"Sergeant, it's well to be in good standing with the Lord before you go into battle. Of course, it's well to be in good standing with Him anyway, on general principles and for your own soul. As Jesus said in the Book of Mark: We don't know the time when death will come." He shrugged. "Although a battlefield seems a lot more dangerous than being home in bed."

"True. Unless you're home in bed when the Wyzhnyny arrive." Hawkins paused. "What about death, Isaiah? What can you tell us about that?"

"In Contemplations on the Testaments, Elder Hofer wrote that `death is the door to Heaven and Hell, and each of us chooses in life which one it will be.' So I'm prepared to die defending humankind."

"How about you, Hosea?"

"Well, Sergeant, say you're out deadening timber. And your hound's laid up hurt, so you're out there alone. You hear something and turn, and there's a big old tiger ten foot away, and you'd just set aside your ringing ax. My bet is, you'd be too scared to spit, even if you were spotless as the Lamb of God. The soul might go to Heaven, but the body? It'd stay behind for tiger feed, and don't no way like the prospect."

"Ah! Now there's a good way of putting it. Thank you, Hosea." Hawkins scanned and pointed. "Jael, you look as if you have something to say."

"Yessir, Sergeant. I'm a lot more scared of great pain than of dying. I suspect that lying out there in terrible pain, with maybe my innards ripped open and the flies buzzing, I'd be crying out to God to take me fast as he can."

"Good point," Hawkins said, thinking he'd as soon it hadn't come up. "But if it comes down to it, in combat you'll all have something in your aid kit that will greatly deaden the pain."

Jael continued before Hawkins could call on someone else. "And something else, Sergeant. There are things I want to do before I die. Have children, bring them up, watch them grow. Maybe even be a grandmother."

Hawkins nodded. "A good wish to have; a good ambition. But to enjoy it, it helps to have a safe place to live. There are lots of people who chose to stay on New Jerusalem-many with children-and they're a lot more likely to see their children murdered than grow up. While those who left with children… a labor camp's a hard place to raise a family. But when the war is over, and if we win it, things will work out for them.

"The fact is, the invaders have changed everything for us. I have a wife and two children back in North America. In a city called Madison, by a large beautiful lake. There's a good chance I'll never see them again, but I'll be doing what I can to keep them safe."

"Sergeant Hawkins?" It was Isaiah Vernon again.

"Yes, Isaiah?"

"Where do Sikhs believe they go when they die?"

Don't get into that, Arjan, Hawkins warned himself. It'll dilute the subject we're here for, and maybe generate contention. He would, he decided, give them a generality, something uncomplicated but basically valid. "Isaiah," he said, "think of it as returning to the loving arms of God."

When 2nd Platoon got back to the company area, there wasn't any real discussion about their evening. A few comments, but no actual discussion. In fact, the hut was more quiet than usual.

Jael Wesley was the first to take her toiletries bag and head for the latrine to brush her teeth. When she was almost there, she met Isaiah Vernon on his way to the hut. On impulse she stopped him.