"A teenage son is, uh, is like a kind of wild man. It was a real sigh of relief when he went off to college, you know?"

"And now he"s coming back, and crazy, too."

"Yeah. I guess that"s about it."

"And h.o.m.os.e.xual. That bothers you."

"Sure it does. I mean, he"s still, he"s still my boy. ""It would bother me, too." He squared the papers in front of him. "Look. There might be something we can do."

"To make him, make him normal?"

"Well, to make him prefer girls to boys. It"s called aversion therapy. We"d have to keep him a while longer."

"Well, sure."

"And we"d like to give him electro-convulsive therapy, too. It would make him more receptive."

"Sure. You"re the doctor."

He slid over a piece of paper. "John"s still a minor, of course, and also not mentally competent. Would you sign this release for him?"

Mr. Speidel looked at it. "But he"s in the Army. Can"t you do anything to him you want?"

"It"s just a formality. Besides, John won"t be in the Army much longer. He"ll be getting a medical discharge as soon as we feel comfortable about him leaving."

His brow furrowed. "But then if he has like a relapse? Can we bring him back here?"

"No, he"d go to the nearest VA hospital. We"ve already started the paperwork for his disability rating. If he gets a fifty-percent disability or more, which is likely, he can go to the VA for anything-free medical care for the rest of his life. But no matter what, he"ll always be able to receive treatment for this problem."

"His h.o.m.o, h.o.m.os.e.xuality?"

"Any mental problem whatsoever. Anything that"s sendee-connected." He set his pipe down in the ashtray and looked steadily at Mr. Speidel. "Before the Army, John was interested in girls. Very interested, you said."

"Definitely. It was a problem."

"Well, sometimes that can be a smokescreen. A man will pretend to be interested in girls so no one will suspect. You know?"

"He could get an Oscar, then."

"Well, yes. But there"s also "situational" h.o.m.os.e.xuality. A guy is in prison, or aboard ship in the Navy, or at a boarding school-or out in the jungle with a bunch of other guys. "

"But wait. I"ve been in situations like that. I mean, I was in the Army, too. We didn"t go around-"

"Of course not. But some people, boys who have an unusually strong s.e.x drive. " He shrugged. "All we really have to do is repattern him. Sort of make him regret what he"s done-and get interested in girls again."Mr. Speidel nodded vigorously, took out his fountain pen and signed the release and dated it. "He"ll be grateful to you for the rest of his life, I know it."

Speidel nodded. "He"s a good boy. We just have to put him back on the right track."

h.o.m.os.e.xuality In 1991, people investigating the difference between male and female brains found that there was a region of the hippocampus that was twice as large in heteros.e.xual males as in females and h.o.m.os.e.xual males. The next year, researchers claimed to have found a gene that apparently predisposes men toward h.o.m.os.e.xuality.

Socrates and Plato, who had a love relationship as well as a scholarly one, probably would have been mystified by a supposedly advanced culture that made a big deal out of this. There have been other cultures, like the Etero in New Guinea, in which h.o.m.os.e.xuality is mandatory for a certain period of a man"s life. All primates and most mammals do it under some conditions. Only humans, presumably, worry about it.

Captain Folsom worried about it a lot. He had authority to back him up, too; theDiagnostic and Statistic Manual, DSM-I, still cla.s.sified h.o.m.os.e.xuality at the top of the list "302. s.e.xual Deviation." In May of 1968, this manual would be superseded by the DSM-II. That would still call h.o.m.os.e.xuality a deviation, but would note "this diagnosis is not appropriate for individuals who perform deviant s.e.xual acts because normal s.e.xual objects are not available to them." Captain Folsom would ignore that. As he ignored Spider"s absurd contention that he had never indulged in a h.o.m.os.e.xual act.

The poor boy was irrational about Lee, the pinko queer. But it was not too late to save him.

Suggestions Lee and Beverly sat together on the couch, reading the paper and a textbook, the house cat scrunched impartially between them. Lee scratched the animal"s head and it purred loudly. Beverly set her book on the floor and leaned back, rubbing her eyes. "I"m not going to learn this."

"Is that a prediction or a declaration?"

"Algebra." She yawned. "If I"d dropped out last week I could"ve gotten some tuition back."

"Why do you need two courses in algebra, anyhow? I got away with one."

"Yeah, but you"re dumb." She leaned up against his shoulder. "It"s for stat. Need stat for Historical Methods."

Lee put his hand on her thigh and the eat scrambled for freedom. "You ought to drop out. Larry"s offer"s still open."

"Sounds like fun, slap paint all day. I"ve seen how tired you get."

He shrugged. "It"s twice minimum wage."

"Huh uh. Minimum wage went up to $1.60 on the first.""Larry"d go $3.20 if we asked him. He"d like to have a girl on the job."

"Sure, stare at my b.u.t.t all day. Larry gives me the creeps."

Lee took a pencil and scribbled on the newspaper. "Look, I get five an hour. If we both put in a thirty-hour week, we"d clear almost a thousand a month."

"Really?" She studied his figures.

"And last month I made more than two hundred on the gra.s.s. We can almost live on that." She rolled her eyes but didn"t say anything.

"We could put away a solid eight or nine hundred a month. Summer comes, we say f.u.c.k it and split for California." They had talked about that. "Haight-Ashbury, man. It"s another world."

"Yeah," she said. She leaned over and picked up the book and opened it where a folded-over sheet of graph paper was holding her place. "See how I do on this test." She stared at the page without reading.

Lee slid his hand up to her crotch and stroked lightly with his fingertip. She smiled. "I"ll give you ten minutes to stop doing that."

Fifth Version Captain Folsom"s "office" was actually one fourth of a large office that had been quadrisected by six-foot-high government-gray dividers. He had aPlayboy calendar up on one wall and diplomas from his two degrees framed on another. His desk blotter was an expensive-looking leather artifact embossed with the seal and motto of the University of Oklahoma.

He hung up his hat and coat and looked with mild satisfaction upon his orderly domain. There was a single piece of interoffice mail in his In box, and the person who had delivered it had taken care to center it precisely.

He sat in the swivel chair and opened the envelope and frowned. It was another one of Specialist Speidel"s fantasies. He should never have given the boy that tablet.

We didn"t know what to expect when we came up out of the shelter. Nothing but ashes, I figured, even though it was a park. Washington was a prime target, not even fifteen miles away.

But it was surprisingly green. Normal-looking at first, but then yourealized there weren"t any big trees; there weren"t any plants that looked like they were more than about two years old. We"d been in the shelter for three.

There was a sparrow hopping around in a bush that looked bigger than a normal bird. I stared at it. It had a long curved beak and three eyes.

Surge said the geiger counter was going crazy, 200 roentgens. Be thankful for the suits. We"d just take a look around and then go back down under. Lock and load and get into formation.

I got the rear position, center file, which made me nervous. We could walk a couple of hundred yards past a sniper and then he"d pop the guys in back and run like h.e.l.l.But there couldn"t be anyone alive up here, I told myself. Not unless they lived underground and only came up in suits like ours. Russians? Forget it. We blew them to atoms the first day. While they were doing the same thing to us.

We walked around Bethesda for several hours, stunned by the magnitude of the destruction. Almost every building was a charred ruin, overgrown with comealong vines and honeysuckle. The Peoples Drug Store was half standing, though, and we raided it for cigarettes. The candy was all spoiled.

We were almost back to the shelter entrance on Highland when they hit us. Mutants, dozens of them, armed with rifles, machine guns, and shotguns. They"d been hidden behind a low stone fence. When they popped up and opened fire, I didn"t even have time to raise my weapon and get a sight picture. Batman went down and then Moses, who was in front of me, just exploded. They must have hit his demo bag. I was wiping the blood off my faceplate when a big round must have hit my helmet. Bulletproof, but it was like being clubbed by a baseball bat. I went down, out cold.

I don"t know whether it was minutes or hours later when I woke up. I could hear individual shots, a "pop"

every thirty seconds or so. Through my smeared faceplate I could see one mutant walking around with a rifle, shooting people in the head.

He was an ugly son of a b.i.t.c.h. His eyes were twice the size of humans" and blood red. His teeth were long and pointed; it looked likehe couldn"t close his mouth. His hands had three fingers and a thumb and were covered with hair, but his head was bald, scaly.

He wasn"t paying a lot of attention to what he was doing, just shooting corpses at random, sometimes stooping to take some ammo or other stuff from a utility belt. I thought maybe if I lay still, he might go on past me. My M16 was locked and loaded, but I didn"t know whether it worked. Besides, if I tried to sit up and aim, I"d probably faint again. My head was pounding, vision blurry.

I was still thinking about it when he walked over to me and pointed the rifle at my head. Before I could react, he pulled the trigger-but it wentclick,out of ammo. I tipped the M16 up to point at his crotch and putted the trigger. Eighteen rounds ripped him wide open. He fell over with a terrible high-pitched squeal.

I staggered to my feet and looked around. No mutants, but I reloaded anyway. G.o.d, it was a terrible sight. All of the platoon had been blown away, some of them literally shot to pieces. The street was slick with blood and there were flies everywhere. There were four dead mutants over by the stone wall.

I scarfed up an M79 and a bandolier of grenades and headed back to the shelter. No sign of any of the mutants, not until I got there.

The door was open, deadly radioactive air flooding the chambers. I stepped inside but didn"t have to go past the anteroom, piled high with corpses. 1 knew there was noplace for me to go. 1 grabbed a box of air filters for my suit and found another bandolier of grenades. Then I went back topside to hunt mutants.

I think I went a little crazy. But then I knew I was going to die.

Well, it was interesting. He wondered about the 200 roentgens. Did Speidel make that up? Folsom was embarra.s.sed to realize that he didn"t remember whether the effect of radiation was measured in roentgens or volts or what. Rams?

So he shot the enemy in the crotch. In the genitals. Speidel"s father was balding and had hair on the back of his hands. Prominent teeth. At the last interview, he"d had bloodshot eyes, a drinker"s eyes.Was Speidel acting out some oedipal fantasy here? Perhaps it was something less conventional. Probably anger at his own h.o.m.os.e.xuality, since shooting is a pretty obvious symbol, and he shot at the other man"s p.e.n.i.s. e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. on his father"s p.e.n.i.s? A desire for s.e.xual domination of his father?

Folsom opened the file drawer and took out Spider"s previous essay. He set them side by side and opened his top drawer, where he had 335 cards in five pastel colors plus white, in orderly stacks. It was Friday, pink day, so he selected a third of an inch of pink cards and slid all but one of them into his breast pocket. He t.i.tled one "Specialist S"s fantasies," and read through the s.p.a.ce-opera one, which he didn"t realize was loosely modeled on Starship Troopers, a novel by Robert Heinlein. Captain Folsom had never read any science fiction, which he thought was trivial; nor fantasy, except for some p.o.r.nography, which was of professional interest.

He printed neatly with a Rapidograph drawing pen: hostility toward authority sarcasm "moses" in both/anti-semitism?-explodes in both, blood "batman" in both/negro? racism?

"i guess i went a little crazy" in both hopelessness in both hostility, revenge He studied the card. Actually, patterns were emerging. He should encourage Specialist Speidel to write some more.

He did have more pressing things to worry about; patients in worse condition. But a lot of them would never be helped. It was gratifying to work with the ones like Speidel, where you could identify the problem and see that it was amenable to solution. He took out an Interoffice Memo tablet and routed to Dr. Tolliver a request to begin aversion therapy with Speidel, augmented by electroshock.

No news is good news Beverly woke up the next morning feeling happy. She had decided that algebra was less important than working for Dr. King and saving a little money so they could go spend the summer with Lee"s friends in San Francisco. The world was changing fast, and she wanted to bein it, not imprisoned in a cla.s.sroom.

She looked at Lee"s face for a long time in the thin dawn light. He looked childlike, almost pretty, when he was sleeping. She suppressed the slight urge to wake him up. He probably didn"t have much juice left after last night, and besides, they ought to save their strength. They"d volunteered to go down to the Mall and help with the construction of the shantytown that was being built for the Poor People"s March.

She slipped out of bed and dressed quietly, jeans and a make love not war sweatshirt. She liked the defiant, s.e.xy feeling of not wearing underwear-Lee didn"t so she didn"t, except for her period. But she wouldn"t go braless. That was a little too much, too public. And she wouldn"t walk the ten steps to the bathroom naked, even though other people did.She made as little noise as possible in the bathroom and decided not to shower; she"d be grimy in a couple of hours, anyhow. Maybe they could take a bath together when they got back.

Downstairs, she put on water for coffee and brought in the paper. It was a good-news day, March 16th.

Bobby Kennedy announced that he was going to run for President! Martin Luther King was pressing Johnson on human rights. Alexandr Duhcek was defying Moscow-a Communist himself, he was declaring an era of democracy and freedom in Czechoslovakia.

Later in the year, there would be sadder news about Kennedy and King and Czechoslovakia. But one important thing happened on March 16th that wouldn"t make the papers for more than a year.

At 7:30 in the morning, a wave of a.s.sault helicopters landed a company of infantrymen outside of the Vietnamese hamlet My Lai-4. Told that it was a "hot LZ," they jumped out of the helicopters shooting.

n.o.body shot back.

This was Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Brigade-part of the Americal Division, the Army"s newest, largest, and least well-organized division-and though the company had lost forty-two men killed and wounded by land mines and sniper fire, they had never engaged the enemy in combat.

They were more than ready.

Their company commander, Captain Ernest Medina, had said that this was their big chance to "get even"

with the Viet Cong. The 48th Viet Cong Battalion was holed up in My Lai, and although they outnumbered Charlie Company two to one, Medina had confidence in the Americans" superior firepower and fighting ability. All the women and children should be out of the hamlet, getting an early start for their weekly sojourn to the market in Quang Ngai, six miles away.

There was no one in there but VC. Kill them all. Destroy all crops and livestock, and burn the f.u.c.king place to the ground. It would be a lesson to the whole province.

It wound up being the wrong kind of lesson. Eventually, it would have as much effect as the Tet Offensive toward demoralizing America and losing the war. Medina was wrong about the VC and he was wrong about his men"s competence: other people in the Americal Division derided them as "the Butcher Brigade," a gang of undertrained thugs who beefed up their body counts with dead civilians.

The LZ wasn"t hot. The only man killed in the disembarking firestorm was an old farmer, unarmed. The enemy must have been holding their fire. Charlie Company advanced cautiously on the hamlet. A few people tried to flee the village and fell in a hail of bullets: two women, three children.

The company was not fired upon as it swept into the village. n.o.body knows what started it, but a couple of soldiers began shooting into the gra.s.s huts, and then more people started shooting, and the situation degenerated into a ma.s.sacre. There was no return fire; there were no VC. Young women were raped and sodomized and then shot point-blank. Old men and women and children were herded into a drainage ditch and exterminated with aimed single-shot fire; target practice. Fifteen or twenty women and children were discovered kneeling, praying, around burning incense. They were executed with shots to the head.

Medina"s men killed more than 300 old men, women, and children on 16 March 1968; their only casualty was one man who shot himself in the foot. The official battle report was 69 Viet Cong killed in action, with no mention of civilian casualties.

Since Spider wasn"t over there any longer, Beverly didn"t pay much attention to battle reports. HerSundayPost the next day would report Americal"s successful engagement in two paragraphs that had more typographical errors than facts: Troops of the U.S. Light 41th Brigade killed 128 Vietcong on the central coast Sat.u.r.day. two Americans were killed and ten wounded in the fight on the coastal lowlands just outside Quangngai City 330 miles northeast of Saigon. Then enemy force had been softened up before the U.S. ground a.s.sault by an air attack. Helicopter gunships and artillery covered the infantrymen"s advance, which began around 7:50 a.m. and ended around nightfall.

One company of the American brigade swept into the enemy area shortly after the air attack. Then a second company landed in helicopters an hour later two miles to the north to try to cut off the Vietcong"s escape routes.

About a year later, one of the men who had witnessed it would step forward to tell the truth. Fourteen soldiers were tried for war crimes. Thirteen were acquitted. Lieutenant William Galley was convicted of the murder of twenty-two civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment. The term was reduced to ten years; he served three and was given a dishonorable discharge.

The Americal Division would be deactivated in 1971. Its own people called it "the outfit that couldn"t even do wrong right."

Stuff and nonsense Among the artifacts available for Folsom"s a.n.a.lysis were a sketchy account of Spider"s service in Vietnam, an evaluation form filled out when he finished Advanced Individual Training at Fort Leonard Wood, and a plastic bag with the wallet and a small notebook that he had carried with him in the field.

The notebook"s pages, stained with red laterite dust, had the names and home addresses of other soldiers, notations about lOUs, and several pages of Vietnamese words and phrases with English equivalents, in somebody else"s handwriting. The last page had several puzzling statements, ending with "We had s.e.xual intercourse" and "I got run over by a tank."

In the wallet there was a school picture of Beverly and another picture of Beverly and Spider at a picnic.

A tightly folded-up mimeographed copy of "The Ballad of Eskimo Nell," a p.o.r.nographic poem. Payment records and receipts for money orders he"d sent home. A single playing card, the ace of diamonds. There was an interesting "conduct card" issued by MACV, the Military a.s.sistance Command/Vietnam: THE ENEMY IN YOUR HANDS.

As a member of the US military forces, you will comply with the Geneva Prisoner of War Conventions of 1949 to which your country adheres. Under these conventions: YOU CAN AND WILL.

DISARM YOUR PRISONER.

IMMEDIATELY SEARCH HIM THOROUGHLY.

REQUIRE HIM TO BE SILENT.

SEGREGATE HIM FROM OTHER PRISONERSGUARD HIM CAREFULLY.

TAKE HIM TO THE PLACE DESIGNATED BY.