As a member of the medical corps with incomplete commission I am to be assigned the rank of second lieutenant, and, in what is called “concurrent conferral,” I am designated on the NCO index as a warrant officer third class, followed by the word interpreter capitalized and in parentheses.

The soldier nods and his gaze wanders. He goes by me, saying to the air in front of him, “Should be good. Interpreters are paid a little more.”

Here’s a dull bit of bronze with a quill heavily embossed on it, and rays. Attached are a pair of cerulean blue ribbons to put on my shoulder straps, which will make my double role clear to anyone who cares to know. There’s even a small blue star embroidered under the red Xs on my arm bands, in fresh thread. Another scrap of print informs me my medical kit, helmet, sidearm, and other gear will be presented to me when I report to Captain-Adjutant A. Makemin.

I put the packet in my satchel and wander over to the river. The light and the dryness give me a disembodied feeling like being high in the mountains where the air is thin, and your vision distorts as though the world were a convex mirror. I sit under a tree and look at the sparkling until I feel better, then paw open my pack again. After some travail I locate in its folds a simple envelope of brown parchment, and saints be praised there’s a chaw of soldier’s scrip in it. The cellulite paper is shiny and a little transparent, so that the brown yellow and charcoal dyes are like tiny grains floating in it; there’s a finely engraved portrait of some general or other, the relevant numbers in their swirling ornamental foliage, and unwholesomely frenetic webbing underlying it all. Glancing up, I see the rally point.

Resignedly I make my way back past the office and into the camp, which spills out of the city limits onto the fringes of the foothills and scabland. There are rows of packing crates here, like a warehouse. A droop-faced man in a floppy turban and dingy tweed leans his elbows on one of the crates at the end of a row tracing circles with his knuckle on the wood. I ask him about Makemin. He rubs his nose on the side of his finger.

“MAH-keh-min, you mean?”

(I’d said “MAKE-min.”)

“Is that how you say it?”

He looks bored.

“... Yes, unless there’s another,” I say.

“Not in, bub.”

“Do you know where he is? I’m supposed to report.”

The man is turning, hobbling off, the level of his shoulders seesaws as he goes back between the freight.

“He’s off griping up a storm with the dispatcher. Come back again later—nobody’s going anywhere.”

The camp is mostly deserted; I see dun tents, bales of mosquito netting, churns of benzoin, all manner of things I can’t readily identify, but that I somehow know have been sitting here a long time, dust duning up against the crates.