Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut Page A

General William K. Corbett, camp commander, Major General Earl Pruitt, division commander, and their aides.
    Private First Class Hacketts was in the middle of the First Squad of the Second Platoon of B Company of the First Battalion of the 427th Regiment of the 107th Infantry Division of the Ninth Corps of the Twelfth Army, and he stayed right there, and put his left foot down every time the drummer hit the bass drum.
    “Dee-veesh-ee-own—” cried the Division Commander through a loudspeaker.
    “Reg-ee-ment—” bawled four regimental commanders.
    “ ’Tal-ee-own—” cried twelve battalion commanders.
    “Cump-neee—” shouted thirty-six company commanders.
    “Batt-reeee—” shouted twelve battery commanders.
    “P’toon—” muttered a hundred and ninety-two platoon commanders.
    “Hacketts,” said Private First Class Hacketts to himself.
    “Halt!”
    And Hacketts did, hut, two.
    “Ri-yut—” said the loudspeaker.
    “Right, right, right, right, right, right …” echoed two hundred and fifty-six voices.
    “Right,” said Private First Class Hacketts to himself.
    “Fay-yuss!”
    Hacketts faced right, hut, two. And he stared into the small, bright eyes of the Shah of Bratpuhr, spiritual leader of 6,000,000 people somewhere else.
    The Shah bowed slightly from the waist.
    Hacketts did not bow back because he wasn’t supposed to and he wasn’t going to do a goddamn thing he wasn’t supposed to do and he had only twenty-three more years to go on his hitch and then he was through with the Army and the hell with it, and in twenty-three years if some sonofa-bitching colonel or lieutenant or general came up to him and said, “Salute me,” or “Pick up that butt,” or “Shine your shoes,” or something like that he’d say, “Kiss my ass, sonny,” and whip out the old discharge and spit in his eye and walk away laughing like crazy because his twenty-five years was up and all he had to do was hang around with the old gang in Hooker’s in Evansville and wait for the old pension check and to hell with you buddy because I don’t have to take no crap from nobody no more because I’m through and—
    The Shah clapped his hands delightedly and continued to stare at Private First Class Hacketts, who was a huge, healthy man.
“Niki Takaru!”
he cried, exhaling a strong effluvium of
Sumklish.
    “No
Takaru!”
said Doctor Halyard. “Sol-dee-yers.”
    “No Takaru?”
said the Shah in puzzlement.
    “What’s he say?” said General of the Armies Bromley.
    “Said they’re a fine bunch of slaves,” said Halyard. He turned to the Shah again and waggled his finger at the small, dark man. “No
Takaru.
No, no, no.”
    Khashdrahr seemed baffled, too, and offered Halyard no help in clarifying the point.
    “Sim koula Takaru, akka sahn salet?”
said the Shah to Khashdrahr.
    Khashdrahr shrugged and looked questioningly at Halyard. “Shah says, if these not slaves, how you get them to do what they do?”
    “Patriotism,” said General of the Armies Bromley sternly. “Patriotism, damn it.”
    “Love of country,” said Halyard.
    Khashdrahr told the Shah, and the Shah nodded slightly, but his look of puzzlement did not disappear.
“Sidi ba
—” he said tentatively.
    “Eh?” said Corbett.
    “Even so—” translated Khashdrahr, and he looked as doubtful as the Shah.
    “Lay-eft—” shouted the loudspeaker.
    “Left, left, left, left, left, left …”
    “Left,” said Hacketts to himself.
    And Hacketts thought of how he was going to be left alone in the barracks this week end when everybody else was out on pass because of what happened in inspection that morning after he’d mopped and squeegeed the floor and washed the windows by his bunk and tightened up his blankets and made sure the tooth-paste tube was to the
left
of the shaving-cream tube and the tube caps both pointed
away
from the aisle and that the cuffs on his rolled-up socks pointed
up
in his footlocker and that his mess kit and mess cup and