"He"s afraid of us, you know. You can really f.u.c.k with him."

"Yeah." Spider laughed. "I started talking to him in German, in pig Latin. He looked at me like I was crazy."

"Really." He lit up a cigarette. "If you aren"t crazy, though, what the f.u.c.k are you? In the wrong ward?"

"Don"t put it out." Spider shook out a Newport and used his match. "Is this really Walter Reed?"

"Yeah, trust me, flew into Edwards. Where do you think yon are?" He leaned forward. "Are you really crazy?"

"Hnh nh, no. Yeah. I don"t know. I was in the jungle, we got the s.h.i.t kicked out of us. I guess maybe I did go a little crazy. Is that why I"m here?"

The guy shrugged. "You"re the doctor. You come from the Nam?"

"Around Pleiku, yeah. We got in this firefight and, I don"t know. I got knocked out, some weird s.h.i.t happened. Maybe it didn"t happen. I do remember the helicopter and some hospital, I guess in Pleiku, really crowded. I was on a cot in the hall, all tied up. They"d let me take a s.h.i.t and then they"d shoot me up with some s.h.i.t, tie me up again. It"s all just a big blur. I wound up here, in some other ward. My ears hurt and kept popping so I figured I"d been on a plane; that"s one thing I do remember. Then they stopped giving me shots and I stopped sleeping all the time. When I could walk, they moved me in here.

Then last night the nurse says this is Walter Reed.

"Trust me. We landed at Edwards Air Force Base. It"s Walter Reed."

"But I live here."

The guy squinted at him. "We all live here."

"I mean Ireally live here. Out in Bethesda."

"Maryland?"

"Yeah."He nodded. "They say I tried to kill my wife. That"s not true. You speak German?"

"Just a few words. One semester."

"We were stationed in Germany, but I never got the lingo, you know? Like I hardly ever got off the base."

"Yeah, like I never learned any Vietnamese.Chicu hoi. Di di man. Stuff like that."

"What, "don"t shoot; I voted for Mao"?" They both laughed. "No way I was gonna kill her. She come at me with a fryin" pan, man, a f.u.c.kin" cast-iron skillet."

"s.h.i.t. She"s the one ought to he in here." Spider made a face at the cigarette and twisted the filter off. "So you hit her?"

"Huh uh." He didn"t change expression, but tears started to run down his cheeks. "We were in the kitchen, I poked her."

"Poked?"

"Yeah, I picked up a steak knife and poked her."

"Where?"

"In the kitchen."

"Oh."

"That"s how I got this." He raised his foot, encased in plaster. "She dropped the f.u.c.kin" frying pan on my bare foot. Broke two toes."

"Was that before you poked her, or after?"

"After. Well, just barely. About the same time. It only went in a couple inches. Maybe four inches. Then I did it again, after she dropped the skillet."

"Where?"

"Oh, I poked her in the stomach. Abdomen, if you want to get technical."

"She okay now?"

"She"s a f.u.c.kin" b.i.t.c.h, man, I don"t know. She"s still in Bremerhaven, far as I know." He wiped his face with his hands. "I even took her to the infirmary, drove her there. I told her what to say. But I"m waitin"

for her out in the waitin" room and in comes these three MPs with guns. I go quietly, you know? But when they started to putme in the lockup, I don"t know, I freaked out." He laughed and smacked his fist into his palm. "Decked one of them. One shot, f.u.c.kin" decked "im."

"Youhit an MP? With a gun?""Yeah, that was stupid, I know. They got me down on the ground and cuffed me. Then they took off the cuffs and put me in a strait-jacket and left me in a room with the one I"d knocked down. He pushed me off the chair and proceeded to kick the stuffing out of me. I pa.s.sed out."

There was a long pause. "What, you woke up here?"

"No, h.e.l.l. There was a couple of hearings and some shrink talked to me, I thought he was on my side.

But then they say I"m not competent to stand trial and send me here." He coughed hoa.r.s.ely. "When I"m competent I guess I go back to Germany and they hang my a.s.s." He coughed again and threw his cigarette into the b.u.t.t can on the wall. "The b.i.t.c.h."

"They"d hang you for that?"

"s.h.i.t, I don"t know. Not unless she dies. She got infected with para something. Paranitis."

Spider looked up at the door. "Here comes the Pill-down Man." Specialist Knox, a tall, heavy black man, came into the ward pushing a shiny metal cart with lots of trays and compartments. On the top there were thirteen small white paper cups containing pills, matched up to small square Polaroids of each patient"s face.

Spider was his fourth customer. He emptied the cup into his hand and said, "Juice or water?"

Spider looked at the pill and capsule. "These aren"t what I got last time, though."

"Don"t give me any s.h.i.t, man, I just work here. Juice or water?"

"The little orange one"s Thorazine," the blond man said. "Make you behave. I don"t know about the other one."

"Antibiotic," Knox said. He poured Spider a paper cup of juice.

Spider tried to hide the Thorazine under his tongue but he swallowed it reflexively. The juice was watery and acrid.

Knox handed the other man his pills but then looked back at Spider. "Yeah, you Speidel." He reached behind the cart and brought out a spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen. "Captain My Captain say you supposed to write somethin" out for him." He handed it to him and said in a low voice, "Where you from in the Nam?"

"II Corps, here and there. I was attached with the 1st of the 8th when I got wounded."

"Yeah, up Pleiku, Kontum. I been through there." He glanced back at the door. "Look, don"t you sweat the Tho"azine. That"s the smallest they got, twenty-five mikes. You been gettin" ten times that much, injected, over on the other ward. Pretty soon you he able to count up to ten."

"Oh. Thanks." Knox nodded absently and moved on down.

"He"s okay for a lifer," the blond man said. "You must of been pretty much a zombie over there."

"Guess so. I don"t remember much. h.e.l.l, I don"t remember goin" from Vietnam to the States." He smiled.

"You sure this is Walter Reed? I mean, they could build a place like this in Nam and keep all usparanoids there."

The other man stretched out on his bunk. "Hey, you don"t have to worry about bein" paranoid. You"re in the army. There reallyis somebody after your a.s.s." He chuckled at his own joke and lit up a cigarette.

When Spider didn"t respond, he glanced over.

Spider was staring at the doorway, his face pale and waxen, mouth half open.

"What the f.u.c.k? What is it, man?"

"Nothin". Just a guy I see sometimes. He"s not real."

"Not real?"

"He"sthere but he"s not, like, not real. I mean n.o.body else can see him."

"You ever talk to him?"

"Huh uh." Spider rubbed his face hard and blinked twice with his whole face. He looked at the other man. "Sometimes he talks to me."

March The fourth version Sarge said it was going to be a "walk in the park." Some park, some walk.

It was about local noon by the time we got our s.h.i.t together, suited up, out of the ship and ready to hike, just like we"d done every other day for the past ten. But all the other expeditions had been through the gra.s.sy plain that lay between our landing site and the sea. This was our first foray into the hilly jungle to the rear.

To give Sarge some credit, there was no reason for anybody to expect trouble. All the action on this planet had been thousands of klicks to the south, in the frozen tundra. But I guess the powers that be were using us as bait, trolling us in various directions to see whether we could lure the enemy into a new environment. If that was the goal, we were to be wildly successful.

I was nervous from the very beginning. We were used to an un.o.bstructed line of sight all the way to the horizon, and if you wanted to see further, you could just hit bounce and your suit would shoot you up about a hundred meters.

But here, you could only see a few meters in any direction. The jungle was a riotous tangle of brush and vines, k.n.o.bbly vines as thick as your arm with spikes like tenpenny nails. Everything was a sickly chartreuse and brown, like the gra.s.s but more washed out. If you bounced, you"d come back down in the middle of the briar patch somewhere. Your laserfinger could cut through it easily enough, but how would you know which direction to go? (Actually, I guessed you could spin around at the top of your bounce and take a reading on the ship. I hadn"t really thought it through.) Sarge took point, cutting us a swath several meters wide with the heavy laser. The stuff was still smoldering when I walked through, at the end of the line. That was not anybody"s favorite position. I spent a lot of time checking the rear, which in the c.u.mbersome suits means lumbering around in asemicircle. The things need rearview mirrors.

I trusted the two guys in front of me. Batman was weird, an Allied observer from Sirius IV, wings and all, but he"d seen a lot of combat and was absolutely cool. Moses was from Earth like me, a jew from Iowa, which some guys thought was funny, like in the movies the Jewish guy is always from Brooklyn. He"s always the first one to die, too, him or the black dude, which in this case would have to be Batman. We kidded Moses about that (and Batman, too, but Sirians don"t have any sense of humor) and he went along with it, but you could tell it spooked him. Rightly so, as it turned out.

After a couple of hours it was starting to get routine, up and down the hills, splash through the slimy sulfurous streams, every note and then see a flowering plant or one that wiggled at you. That was a little eerie, as if they were reaching out.

We came to a natural clearing, like a dell where three hills came together, and Sarge told us to take five.

Moses started to say something sarcastic, and then the top half of him just disappeared. Nothing left but two legs, toppling, and a fine mist of red spray. Then Batman got it; his blood was bright blue.

I bounced, by reflex, but I didn"t bounce far. I must have crashed into a tree limb a few meters up. It knocked me out cold, which evidently saved my life.

When I woke up, there was a Bug walking around the clearing, making sure people were dead. He would scrabble along sideways up to the head and use a sonic blaster, pretty messy.

I didn"t move. My arm was stretched out, and he had to walk right over the laserfinger to get to me. I squeezed and it sliced him in two.

I got up and looked around. There weren"t any other Bugs, but it didn"t look like there were any of us left alive, either.

I went to the center of the clearing. For some reason they had sliced Surge"s suit open, I guess just to watch him die in the poisonous atmosphere. His skin was bright red.

I checked overhead and bounced. At the apex of my bounce, I turned around to locate the ship, broadcasting my emergency beacon.

But there was no one to come help. The Roger Youngwas a smoking ruin. I drifted back down into the clearing full of carnage. I guess I went a little crazy.

s.e.xual release Spider"s father stepped diffidently into the open doorway. "Dr. Folsom?"

The captain did not correct him. "Ah, Mr. Speidel; come in, come in." He gestured at the chair across the desk from him. "Have a seat. Just a minute." He returned the file on his blotter to a desk drawer and searched for another one. "Here we go."

There were actually only two files in the drawer. This was not Folsom"s office. He did not like to have other people in his office; it was too small even for him alone.

He took out his pipe and pouch and began the filling ritual. "John is doing well, quite well. He responds well to his medication; there have been no further violent outbursts.""That doesn"t surprise me. He"s about as un-violent a kid as I"ve ever known."

"Yes, that"s interesting. Yet it did take four men to restrain him at one time." They both shook their heads.

"I wanted to speak to you alone, without Mrs. Speidel, because a couple of the matters I have to discuss are s.e.xual in nature. I saw no reason to embarra.s.s her."

"I appreciate that."

"First of all, John"s syphilis has responded dramatically to penicillin. That"s lucky. There are some virulently resistant strains in Vietnam."

Mr. Speidel made a strangled sound.

"Pardon me?" Folsom said.

"Good." Mr. Speidel fired up a Camel. "That"s. that"s good."

Folsom lit his pipe carefully, twice. "He does still have, well, hallucinations. He hears voices, sees people who aren"t there, Vietnamese. But he does know they"re not real. That"s important."

"People he killed?"

"As far as I know, John never killed anybody. Or if he did, he"s repressed the memory. That wouldn"t be uncommon.

"By themselves, these hallucinations wouldn"t be enough to keep John in the hospital."

"Really?"

"As long as he doesn"t think they"re real, no. He understands that he"s sick and that these illusions are part of the sickness. He knows not to pay any attention to what they say."

"You mean, uh, he might be coming home?"

Folsom raised his eyebrows and didn"t say anything.

"I mean, look. Do you have any children?"

He studied his pipe. "No."