‘Look,’ said Neil, ‘I think we’ve got to face one thing. Sis has been on X for a year now, and it seems logical to me that she’s tired of Base Fifteen, tired of X, and tired of us. We’re all she ever sees. Mike, you’re the newest, what do you think?’

‘That of all of you, I’m the least qualified to judge, so instead I’ll ask Nugget. What do you think?’

‘I won’t have it!’ said Nugget vehemently. ‘If Sis was fed up with us, I’d be the first to know.’

‘Not fed up, just tired! There’s a difference,’ said Neil patiently. ‘Aren’t we all tired? Why should it be any different for her? Do you really think when she wakes up in the mornings she jumps out of her bed singing a song of joy because in a few minutes she’s going to be back in X, back with us? Come on, Mike, I want an opinion from you, not from Nugget or any of the others. You’re the newcomer, you’re not in so deep you can’t see straight any more. Do you reckon she wants to be with us?’

‘I don’t know, I tell you! Ask Ben,’ said Michael, and stared at Neil very directly. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, mate.’

‘Sister Langtry is far too good a woman to grow tired of us,’ said Benedict.

‘She’s frustrated,’ said Luce.

Matt chuckled. ‘Well, X is a frustrating place,’ he said.

‘Not that way, you blinkered dill! I mean she’s a woman, and she’s not getting any, is she?’

The revulsion stabbed at Luce from all sides, but he endured it as if he enjoyed it, grinning.

‘You know, Luce, you’re so low you’d have to climb a ladder to reach a snake’s belly,’ said Nugget. ‘You make me want to puke!’

‘Name something that doesn’t make you want to puke,’ said Luce scornfully.

‘Be humble, Luce,’ said Benedict softly. ‘Be very humble. All men should learn humility before they die, and none of us know when we’ll die. It could as easily be tomorrow as fifty years from now.’

‘Don’t you preach at me, spindleshanks!’ snarled Luce. ‘If you go on the way you’re going, you’ll be in Callan Park a week after you’re on Civvy Street.’

‘You’ll never see that,’ said Benedict.

‘My oath I won’t! I’ll be too busy being famous.’

‘Not on my money you won’t,’ said Matt. ‘I wouldn’t pay a farthing to watch you pee.’

Luce guffawed. ‘If you can watch me pee, Matt, I’ll give you the bloody farthing!’

‘Neil is right!’ said Michael suddenly, very loudly.

The bickering stopped; they all turned their heads to look at him curiously, for the tone of his voice was one they had never heard from him before—full of passion, full of anger, full of authority.

‘Of course she’s tired, and can you blame her? The same sort of thing day after day, Luce picking on everyone, and everyone picking on Luce. Why the hell can’t you lay off each other, and lay off her? Whatever’s wrong with her is her business, not yours! If she wanted to make it yours, she’d talk to you about it. Lay off her! You’re enough to drive a man to drink!’ He got to his feet. ‘Come on, Ben, into the water. Wash yourself clean. I’m going to try to, but with the amount of crap that’s been flying around here, it may take a week.’

A tiny chink in his armor at last, thought Neil, but with no exultation, watching Michael and Benedict walk toward the sea. Michael’s back was very straight. Dammit, he does care for her! But the thing is, does she know it? I don’t think she does, and if I can, I’m going to keep it that way.

‘That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you lose your temper,’ said Benedict to Michael, wading into the water.

Michael stopped, waist deep, and looked at the thin dark worried face with worry written on his own face. ‘It was a stupid thing to do,’ he said. ‘It always is stupid to go off half-cocked. I don’t have a hot temper, so I hate it when people drive me to that sort of behavior. It’s so useless! That’s why I left them. If I’d stayed, I would have made a worse fool of myself.’

‘You’re strong enough to resist temptation,’ said Benedict wistfully. ‘I wish I was!’

‘Go on, mate, you’re the best of the lot of us,’ said Michael affectionately.

‘Do you really think so, Mike? I try so hard, but there’s no easy way. I’ve lost too much.’

‘You’ve lost yourself, Ben, nothing else. It’s all there, waiting for you to find your way back.’

‘It’s the war. It’s made me a murderer. But then I know that’s only an excuse. It’s not really the war, it’s me. I just wasn’t strong enough to pass the test God set me.’

‘No, it’s the war,’ said Michael, hands floating on the water. ‘It does something to all of us, Ben, not only to you. We’re all in X because of what the war’s done to us. If it hadn’t happened along we’d be all right. They say war’s a natural thing, but I can’t see it. Maybe it’s natural for the race, natural for the old men to start it, but for the men who have to fight it—no, it’s the most unnatural life a man can live.’

‘But God’s in there,’ said Benedict, sinking down until his shoulders were submerged, then bobbing up again. ‘It must be natural. God sent me to the war. I didn’t volunteer to go, because I prayed about it and God told me to wait. If He felt I needed testing, He’d send me. And He did. So it must be natural.’

‘As natural as birth and marriage,’ said Michael wryly.

‘Are you going to get married?’ asked Benedict, his head cocked as if he didn’t want to miss the reply.

Michael thought about it; thought of Sister Langtry, well educated, well born, an officer and a gentlewoman. A member of a class he’d had little to do with before the war, and had elected not to join during the war. ‘No,’ he said soberly, ‘I don’t think I’ve got enough to offer any more. I’m just not the way I used to be. Maybe I know too much about myself. To live with a woman and raise children I think you’ve got to have some illusions about yourself, and I don’t have any these days. I’ve been there and I’ve come all the way back again, but where I am now isn’t where I would have been if there’d been no war. Does that make sense?’

‘Oh, yes!’ agreed Benedict fervently, to please his friend; for he didn’t understand at all.

‘I’ve killed men. I’ve even tried to kill a compatriot. The old Shalt Nots don’t apply the way they did before the war. How could they? I’ve hosed chunks of men out of bomber turrets because there wasn’t enough of them left to pick up for decent burial. I’ve hunted for meat-tickets in blood and offal inches deep, worse messes than any civilian slaughterhouse. I’ve been so afraid I thought I’d never again be able to move. I’ve cried a lot. And I think to myself, raise a son of mine to go through that? Not if I was the last man left to repopulate the earth.’

‘It’s the guilt,’ said Benedict.

‘No, it’s the grief,’ said Michael.

7

Since it was well after four o’clock, the sisters’ sitting room was very nearly deserted when Sister Langtry walked in. It was a large and airy room, for it had great French doors on either side opening out onto verandahs, and it was screened with mesh, an unbelievable luxury, as was the mess next door. Whatever obscure military planner was responsible for its furnishing must have loved nurses; there were cushions on the cane settees and a brave attempt at cheerfulness through chintz. If the mildew had long since marred the patterns on the chintz and the laundry had managed to reduce color to non-color, it really didn’t matter. In spirit it was a big, cheerful room, and had a corresponding effect on the nurses who used it.

When Sister Langtry came in she saw that its only occupant was Sister Sally Dawkin from neuro, a crusty middle-aged major who was no more a professional army nurse than Sister Langtry was, fat and jolly and chronically overworked, poor soul; neuro was a notoriously hard ward for any nurse to run. In fact, Sister Langtry could think of no more depressing branch of medicine to be in than wartime neuro, with its dismal prognoses and the incredible way its cases sometimes lingered in defiance of all the natural laws governing survival. An arm didn’t grow back, but the organism did function without it, mourned its loss yet coped with life in much the same way. Brains and spines never grew back either, but what was missing was not the tool; it was the operator of the tool. Neuro was a place where no matter how religious you might be, you sometimes yearned to be able to reconcile euthanasia with humanitarian ethics.