"James Tiptree Jr. - Yanqui Doodle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

He remembered the week they had first issued the Ms. What a change. All the guys who were
muttering about going AWOL just quit. They'd often wondered what was in them. Not cocaine, nothing
he'd ever heard of. Miracles of modern science.

No, waitтАФthe first things they issued were the BZs. He'd been given some specially, when someone
had noticed him firing his M-18 in the air instead of at the Gu├йs in front of them. What the hell, a lot of the
others were doing that, too. The boys they killed had been so young, and they shot so badly. He'd
expected the Commie Gu├йs to be ten feet high and mean. Not baby-faced twelve-year olds. Of course
those same twelve-year olds had been laying mines that blew unlucky grunts apart, butтАж butтАж looking
straight at one and blowing his guts out was somehow different. They ran away fast enough, wasn't that
what counted?

But the Army saw things differently. Kill! Kill! His trainingтАж so he found himself being given some
red capsules and instructed to take one when he was in a shooting situation. BZsтАж Battle ZonesтАж they
had removed all his reservations about blowing anybody away, made it exhilarating. In fact, they had
removed all his reservations about anything. But luckily your memory of what you'd done behind BZs
wasn't too good. They had swept through several little hamlets, putting the flamers to it all, and there
were flash-memories of other things. Patch-views of female flesh, lots of screaming, and one that
bothered him a lotтАФhe didn't want to think about that now.

So then had come the green Sleeper tabs, and after that there weren't any more dreams. Trouble
was, men started nodding over their rifles on patrol. So then there was the general issue of Ms. For
Maintenance. It made an ideal combo.

But detox? Detox before going home? Nobody had said a word to them about that. He'd always
assumed they had some other magic potion, that there'd be some kind of gentle end. Well, it would all be
okay. It had to, he thought, drifting off. Nobody'd do anything so brutal.

He woke up with somebody pushing a tray at him. "Soft diet."

Trying to eat the stuff he didn't feel so good. The M was wearing off. Probably they hadn't given him
enough while he'd been here, his blood levels were low.

A different nurse was on duty, an older, dark-haired woman. She brought him an M when asked,
without comment.

"You're starting detox tomorrow, you know," she told him. But she seemed nicer, more like she was
worried for him.

"What's so big about that? Is it bad?"

"Well-1-1тАж you've been on this stuff how long? A year?"

"Around that."

"We're just starting to get long-timers like you."

"What happens?" he persisted.

She frowned. "Detoxification is always hard. You have to get your body making the chemicals again