The voice of nineteen

Turn 19 of 26

You all make the beds the same way, military style, Execute the wash and dress inspection in perfect unison and fall in on the tarmac by marching in the single file line by number. you all stand at attention on the tarmac as the other 80 officers come out, stand at attention and no one makes a noise. The instructor steps forward yells today is learning day. They say that you’ll given a job and #

The beds come first. Twenty pairs of hands square twenty blankets into the same ridges and corners, and the officers walking the rows find nothing to correct. Then the wash — twenty faces at twenty sinks, twenty brushes, twenty towels hung at the same height — and the dress inspection moves down the line with an officer at each recruit, eyes raking collar, tie, clip, bun, shoes. 'CORRECT.' 'CORRECT.' At your bunk the officer's eyes hold on your bun a half-second longer than on the others, and then she says 'CORRECT' and moves on. You fall in outside in single file by number and march to the tarmac, and the fog is still thick at three-forty when the doors of the main building open and they come out.

Eighty of them, at least. The rows you saw drilling beyond the far doors, plus the twenty who run this compound — officers in slate-navy to the horizon of the yard, fanning into their own formation with the sound of one hundred pairs of boots becoming one pair of boots. Then silence, total, a hundred women and twenty recruits at attention and nobody breathing loudly, until the Lead Instructor steps forward alone.

'TODAY IS LEARNING DAY, RECRUITS!' Her voice carries flat across the tarmac. 'Intake made you the standard. Learning day teaches you what the standard DOES! Every graduated officer in this compound had a learning day. You will have yours. You will be given a job — a duty, a post, a function — and you will be given a number to hold it under, because the job does not know a name and does not want one!'

She walks the front of the recruit line. 'The department is growing. The standard is spreading to other compounds. Graduated officers from THIS compound staff them.' She stops walking directly in front of you, at Nineteen's mark, and does not move on. 'Some of you will be posted there. Some of you will be posted HERE. And one of you has already been selected for something else.' She does not say who. She does not have to; her gray eyes are on your face, on the fixed angry face pulled taut under the lacquered bun, and beside you Six stands at attention looking straight ahead, and down the line Eighty officers stand looking straight ahead, and the fog closes in around the formation.

'OFFICERS WILL DISPERSE TO DUTIES! RECRUITS WILL FOLLOW YOUR INSTRUCTORS TO LEARNING STATIONS!' The hundred break into columns and stream away, and smaller groups of officers peel off toward the recruit line, counting off numbers, collecting their trainees. The officer standing in front of you waits until the tarmac is emptying, and then, quietly, without yelling at all: 'Nineteen. Not the learning stations. Come with me.'