There was one last hope. I wrote a letter to a remote clan relative who was supposed to have a small amount of influence.
It was a moving letter. I told how my test results had been falsified, what beasts our trainers were, how the medics refused to retest me—very much the standard letter that new Haldorian trainees write. As I went out to mail this plea, one evening, I met two of my fellow trainees starting out on a night march in full field equipment.
"How come?" I asked, instantly fearful that I'd missed some notice on the bulletin board.
"We wrote letters," one of them said simply.
"The Trontar censors all our mail," said the other. "Didn't you know? Oh, well, neither did we."
As they marched off, I made a small bonfire out of my letter after first, almost, just throwing it away—before I remembered that the Hweetorals checked our waste cans. What a man has to do to hold two measly stripes!
Acceptance of the inevitable is the beginning of wisdom, says the ancient Haldorian sage. I put in an application for transfer to the Statistical Services to be effective upon completion of Basic Fighter Course.
"Statistical Services?" the Company Clerk asked. "What's that? Anyhow, you're going to be a Fighter Basic, if you get through this training," he said darkly. The Company Clerk was a sad victim of our Haldorian passion for realistic training; he had lacked one day of completing Fighter Basic when he'd let his leg dangle a bit too long after he'd scaled a wall, and the training gentlemen had unemotionally shot it off. As it turned out, our efficient surgeon/replacers had been unable, for some technical reason, to grow back enough leg for full duty. So there was nothing for it but to use the man as could be best done. They'd made him a clerk—mainly because that was the specialty they were shortest of at the time.
"Who says you can put in for Statistical Services?" the Company Clerk demanded.
"Reg 39-47A." I was learning my way around. The night before I was on orderly duty in the office. I had tracked down the chapter and verse which, theoretically, allowed a man to change his destiny.