Daniel Pedersson cursed, and swung the entrenching tool again. It went splat instead of crack, again, and he cursed some more. Not that swearing helped; he was already covered in filthy sewage slush beyond all imagination. The supply depot's jury-rigged sewer system had worked fine all summer, but now the outlet had frozen solid and the sewage had backed up all the way to the officers' latrines. Removing the blockage was a horribly filthy job, but this was the Swedish army. There was always someone who could do with some "disciplinary measures." Ah well. Daniel had been punished before, and he probably would be again.
Not that he was entirely innocent of this current mess either, but he couldn't help feeling that it ought to be procurement officer Paal Nilsson-Loo down here clearing it up instead of him. They weren't even supposed to have a supply depot here, never mind sewers. So what if he'd helped construct this dodgy plumbing in the first place? Or that he and some other enlisted men had been a little too enthusiastic when they found the sewage was blocked, and the enlisted men's latrines were upstream of the officers'?
Nilsson-Loo had been ordered to set up a small Swedish army procurement office for the Grantville area. The Swedes were buying so many goods and services from the booming industry there that they needed someone to sign contracts and inspect the goods, to ensure the crown always got its money's worth. He made a decent living, more than decent in fact, by skimming what he saw as his rightful share off every single deal. A bit more than what the crown might think he was entitled to, but he kept the witnesses quiet by sharing some of his questionable income with his subordinates.
Like when he decided he liked the up-time-style indoor plumbing so much that he had his men lay pipes from their fancy new latrines out to a nearby drainage ditch. Not just his own shiny porcelain throne, but the men's too, since he didn't want to smell their waste if he could help it. Now it had all gone wrong, and the Grantville authorities had gotten wind of their unauthorized plumbing. They'd declared it all to be the Swedish army's problem, after repeatedly using the phrase "code violation." Along with other, less polite English words and phrases which Daniel could now add to his vocabulary. Other new additions were "septic tank" and "leach field." Nilsson-Loo had therefore declared it must be Daniel's problem, for not doing the job right in the first place. So while Daniel was down here in an overflowing ditch, Nilsson-Loo was probably off spending his "skimmings" on women. Or on something else Daniel didn't want to know about; there were rumors, and he worried that his boss might stain the army's reputation one day.
Before he could employ his new skills in language and septic engineering, he had to remove all the effluent from the drainage ditch and deposit it in a more permanent location so it couldn't run off downstream to pollute the waterways. This was backbreaking, boring, seemingly endless work and he'd been at it alone all day. There had been some commotion earlier, but nobody had bothered to tell him what was going on and he couldn't leave his work to find out.
He'd just about finished hacking the frozen sewage into slush and dirty ice cubes, when a sour-looking military policeman arrived escorting a surprisingly cheery person who was carrying a number of buckets. Surprising, that is, for someone about to wade waist-deep in raw sewage with frozen crusty bits on top. Vague recognition kicked in.
"Hey, aren't you one of those ski-troop heroes? What are you doing here on punishment detail?"
The man answered something unintelligible: "Eig e skilaupar, jau, meinn neigu noukon hjelte" it sounded like. "Say again?"
"Sorry," the man answered. "I'll speak German instead. I've gotten used to my Swedish friends understanding me, but they've had some time to learn. My name is Torjer Lien, and I'm a skier but no hero. I'm here for offending a supply officer." He grinned.
"Why? And what's so funny about it?"
"Well, the reason isn't funny." Torjer's face darkened, all merriness gone. "It started when the ski troops were asked to test a new piece of equipment, a 'sleeping bag' made to an up-time pattern and with up-time-style zippers." Torjer spoke while he worked, filling two buckets with filth and handing two more to Daniel. "The 'prototype' we were shown looked good, and when we let a recruit use it for a week it didn't rip or break or anything. That's how we test new equipment—if it's recruit-proof then it's probably strong enough for general issue. We told them it was a great idea, if they would only make them big enough that we could actually use them while wearing all our winter clothes and equipment. The prototype was a bit tight when you put your rifle and everything inside, like we sometimes do to thaw out frozen locks and water bottles."
They carried the buckets over to a hand cart for transport uphill to a large pit. It was going to be some punishment, as there must surely be a hundred more bucketfuls to scoop up and remove.
"Our boss, Captain Virenius, ordered a full platoon set of sleeping bags just like the prototype except a bit wider. What we got—what the supply officer gave our captain—was bags the same too-small size as the prototype and with a thinner, finer-looking type of zipper. The supply officer claimed these were newer, better zippers than the one on the prototype".
The two men continued filling and emptying buckets of unimaginable filth. "We didn't know the zippers were bad—he'd charged the army for a larger version with deluxe extra-strong zippers, and only bought the standard size with cheaper zippers. Zippers designed for ladies' dresses!" Torjer shook his head, and continued to work.
"So out we went, on an exercise to test our new tactics and equipment against friendly 'enemy' units who'd be looking for us, and if we were spotted they'd fire blanks at us. All pretty harmless, but nobody wants to lose a battle even if it isn't for real. So we decided to be serious about it, you know, moving quickly and making cold camp. Just the sort of job for up-time-style sleeping bags, if only the bloody zippers had worked." Torjer spat and cursed for a few minutes in unintelligible Norwegian, apparently without repeating himself.
"The first few nights were great. I had a good, thick reindeer pelt underneath my warm, cozy sleeping bag and I slept like a baby. Except for when that clumsy son-of-a-taxman Ante stumbled in the alarm line and woke me half an hour before it was my turn on stag. The fifth night, however, we were pretty close to the 'enemy' and everyone was a bit on edge. So when our mess kits began to rattle during dog watch, we all burst from our sleeping bags and ran to our defensive positions. I don't think anyone noticed at the time, but nearly all of us tore those lady-fashion zippers open without using the little pull tab thingy. Nobody had told us that would destroy the zippers."
Daniel felt confused. "Back up a little. Mess kits? What made them rattle?"
"We use them for an alarm system," Torjer explained. "You tie a long piece of string to a bunch of tin pots or whatever will make noise, like a couple of mess kits tied together. Run the string out to the sentry post, and he can alert those in the tent without leaving his post. But that's not the point.
"There was a terrific noise, with the alarm string being jerked so hard it nearly took the whole tent down. We thought all hell was breaking loose, and stormed out into the darkness. Some fool opened fire, and the others followed suit. Including me, no less a fool than anyone. But at least I only reloaded once before I realized that we were shooting at shadows."
They were making progress on removing the slushy, near-frozen waste, but somehow that only made it worse. The effluent was now running in fits and starts, bringing fresh and rather more odorous waste their way. They had forgotten about all the sewage standing under pressure in the blocked pipes, and with the blockage removed there was something like a volcanic eruption. At least the fresh stuff wasn't freezing.
"It turned out that the sentry hadn't pulled the alarm string, and neither had any other man. It was a deer—a stupid, insomniac deer that went a-walking right between the sentry and the tent. It tripped in the string, and scared the crap out of us."
Daniel couldn't quite bring himself to laugh in his present circumstances, but he was still curious. "And what did the deer have to do with your offending the supply officer?" he asked.
"Nothing much, but the zippers did. They would have failed sooner or later, so it didn't matter if the alarm was raised for a deer or for the whole Danish army. We had opened fire, announcing our presence to the whole county, so we had to leave. Fast."
Torjer shook his head. "Breaking camp quickly in near pitch darkness and running like the devil himself was after us. That's a recipe for disaster, even in the best of times. And then the weather changed, it turned first wet and then cold. Our skis were soon caked with ice, which isn't nearly as slippery on snow as you might expect. Not when the snow is wet and sticky. Our uniforms were soaked with icy water, which then froze like a suit of ice armor. After a few hours I noticed young Nils Larsson was getting even more clumsy on skis than usual, but when I asked him he claimed to be fine."
Torjer slipped on something unmentionable, landed in something worse, and after an exceptionally long bout of swearing he seemed to have forgotten the story.
"And was he? Fine, that is?" probed Daniel.
"Huh? Oh, him. No, he bloody wasn't. The damned fool had taken his boots off in the tent. Well, you're supposed to do that, but you're also supposed to remember where you put your woolly socks. When that whole deer incident went down he was in too much of a hurry to find both socks, so when we set off skiing he only wore one. Frostbite on three toes, he had. He also had hypothermia, which is why he didn't notice the frostbite. Did you go to that lecture on hypothermia and frostbite, when the up-timers held first aid instruction?"
Daniel nodded. "Yeah, they told us the extremi-somethings get cold first and then when the brain begins to cool you get stupid."
"The 'extremities' you mean," Torjer corrected. "That's your fingers and toes, and other things that stick out. Like your privates. Remember what else they said?"
Daniel gulped, wide-eyed: "If you get bad frostbite, they have to cut it off. Really, the . . . ?"
Torjer nodded sagely. "Yes, that part too if it's really bad."
Some time later, the two men were about to haul the last cart over to the pit when Torjer's hand slipped and he fell face first on the frozen ground. The sudden additional load made Daniel lose his grip, too, and the cart went backwards into the ditch.
"There's even shit on the drawbars," Torjer muttered.
They eventually finished up and walked towards the warm showers, a wonderful invention even if it wasn't quite as social as a communal tub. Waddled to the showers, rather, trying to move without touching their filth-soaked and half-frozen clothes.
Warming up, Torjer picked up the story again. "Now, if someone gets hypothermia near civilization you simply throw him in a hot tub and thaw him out. But when you're in the middle of nowhere and all your gear is wet, you stick him in a sleeping bag and crawl in with him to share some body warmth. Personal privacy be damned."
"Yes, I remember," said Daniel. "That's what they told us at that lecture."
"And that's what mountain men like me have always known," replied Torjer, "only we've always used furs and blankets instead of sleeping bags. Problem was our no-good, stinking sleeping bags were too small even for one man, and the bedeviled zippers didn't work so we couldn't put two bags together to make a large one. In the end we put poor frozen-toes into the only bag that still had a functional zipper. Which saved his life, but meant I had to sleep in a bag that couldn't be closed properly." More profanity followed.
"Look, he had to amputate a toe but he'll be fine otherwise. No longer fit for winter duty, but he'll live. Me, on the other hand, I nearly froze my balls off. The zipper would sort of close, but every time I fell asleep it would open again. Right over my privates, dammit. And me out of my pants, as they were soaking wet and I had to get warm somehow and maybe I wasn't thinking too clearly myself, being cold and all. Remember what I said about extremities? I came this close to freezing my manhood off! Because of a bleeding lady-fashion zipper and that filching, cost-cutting supply officer!"
Torjer was clearly working up a temper, and Daniel had to concentrate on not laughing. It might be bad for his health to annoy Torjer, he decided. "So you set out for revenge. I guess I can understand that"
"I sure did," Torjer continued. "Or I tried to as soon as I learned it was this Nilsson-Loo fellow's fault. I skied all the way here in anger, not even stopping for a change of clothes. I took my axe and ran to his office, thinking I'd chop a couple of his toes off or something. Or maybe an ear. I'm not choosy." His mood seemed to brighten. "But while we'd been on patrol, this shit had been happening to the sewers and nobody had thought to tell me.
"This guy's an officer, right? And the officers' latrines had backed up, spilling right over and running onto his office floor. So there I come, charging in unprepared, and I slip on the filth and lose my axe. Right at his crotch, it went! He'll have to wee sitting down from now on, and it was an accident! A genuine, beautiful, honest-to-god accident with plenty of witnesses. I'd have been hanged if I'd neutered him on purpose, but they can't punish me for an accident!"
When they were done laughing, Daniel remembered. "Then why are you here, if they can't punish you?"
"For laughing! Insolence, they call it!"
So they laughed some more.