the man said.
We walked into the forest together and the GI remained silent, his aura still mostly gray, though it seemed the green of the plants showed through now and then.
We could hear the rain pouring harder, but under the forest canopy it took its time reaching us. Sometimes it was a fine mist, sometimes a steady drip, and now and then a downpour. The noise of the rain on the leaves was quiet compared to what it had been while Ahn and I were in the tree. The soldier's head rotated constantly, back and forth, side to side, up and down, and changing so he never got into a pattern, watching the ground, the trees, and air in front of him, the spaces on either side of him. I found myself doing the same thing.
He moved with thorough, automatic caution but very quickly. Too quickly for me. I lagged behind, panting to keep up. Ahn looked back over his shoulder, worried.
The man stopped abruptly and turned around. "Could I have another piece of candy, ma'am?"
"Sure," I said.
"They're all dead," he said when he had bitten into the M&M. He kicked a log and, when it didn't kick back, lowered Ahn to the ground and sat down himself. "My unit. I thought you was comin' to find me when I saw that bird."
"Dead?" I asked. "Who's dead? You mean the chopper crew?"
"No'm. I mean my unit," he said. Now that he'd started talking, his tone was conversational, ordinary. "We got overrun, I guess you'd call it. See, I was asleep in my bunk one night back at base and we was all in this, like Quonset hut, kinda, with a screen door? And somethin'
wake me up. I always been like that, since I was a little boy. I sorta know when somethin' ain't right, like. Anyhow, I wake up and I see this shadow with a gook hat go by the screen door. And at first that don't mean nothin' 'cause the gooks, you know, they all over the place in the daytime. But then it come to me-they ain't s'posed to be no gooks there at night. And I'm just thinkin' that and I just start, halfasleep, you know, rollin' down under my bed when all of a sudden all hell breaks loose. Somebody starts afirin' in the screen door and killin'
everybody. Everybody in there, all my buddies, all my friends, they get sprayed all over there, and when I crawl out, they all dead. Everyone dead and I ain't even had a chance to warn 'em. And outside the door I see fire and I hear guns and I see gooks runnin' this way and that and I crawl on my belly to the door and they're all over the place, all them gooks. Ain't s'posed to be there at night. Not at all. But they all over the place."
He was shaking his head like an old man with palsy. I patted his arm, the gray and mauve mingling again, spreading into each other. I felt his fear suddenly, as I had felt my own the day before, sharp and acid and helpless.
"How'd you get away?"
"Crawled. I crawled down off that hill, through the fence, and tried to find somebody. But I just got lost. Then I saw your chopper and I thought, William, they have come lookin' for you. Say, you really in the Army?"
"Army Nurse Corps," I said.
"I ain't never seen no Army nurse in Nam. They come for us with you here. We just got to keep out of Charlie's way. Army won't let you stay out here."
"They don't know I'm here," I said, realizing miserably that it was true. "I guess, officially, by now I'm AWOL."
"AWOL? And you a lieutenant? Whoo! That some kinda rich!
Shake," and he held out his hand. I tried to take it, but he did that complicated black handshake instead and I couldn't follow.
"How long you been out here?" I asked him.
"dunno. Two, three days maybe. You?"
"We spent the night in a tree."
"Yeah, me too, till a snake chased me out. I hate them things."
time too. But at least the VC didn't spot us."
"VC? Around here? Where?"
"All over the place last night. They're gone now."
"Fine with me." His aura flooded with beams of yellow, blue, and a hint of purple that went with the sudden wide, self-deprecating grin. "I hate them things too."
Seeing people as rainbows was a dizzying experience. Still, annoying as the side effects were, the edge the amulet gave me was too great to dismiss because it was a little disorienting. And the longer I wore the amulet and the more I listened to William and Ahn and had a chance to compare the feelings the colors gave me about them with their actions and words, the more eloquent the auras became. It was as if people had an extra feature to gesture with, one that expressed a whole side of them that mouths, eyes, and hands were unable to communicate. William's grin, by itself, was somewhat enigmatic, but while the basic gray-brown of his aura told me that he hated and feared the VC deeply and was in a state of shock explained by what he had just told me, the yellow, blue, and purple said, in the same way a grimace or a twinkle in an eye might, that his hate was not a customary thing for him, that he was a very bright guy, and more used to caring about the people around him than hating them.
That was part of the problem with acquiring an object of power without having studied its ramifications. I thought then that the amulet was giving me guarantees, that I could trust what it told me as absolute.
From being a nonbeliever I was rapidly coming to rely on that one talisman as my salvation-rings of power and singing swords, as in
'folkien and King Arthur stories, aren't supposed to lie any more than just and wise rulers. The amulet abolished any reservations I would normally have had about William. But that was partly my fault, I guess.
I desperately needed something to believe in right then.
In basic, the sergeant had given a little speech I thought was amusing at the time. "Those of you who are going to Vietnam will need a god. We do not care which god you pick. Your god can be Buddha, Jesus, Allah, or Pele the volcano goddess. Your god can be sex or money if you so desire. But you will need a god. If you do not have a god, go to the quartermaster and he will issue you one." I began to see what that was all about.
"So," I said. "Have you got any idea where we are now?"
William scooped Ahn up with another smooth motion and started loping through the jungle again, which at that point was easy. The jungle door was flat and the ground cover was mostly more elephant grass, though shorter than that in the field because the trees hogged the light. "Umm hmm."
"You do? Where?"
"In deep shit, woman. We in deep shit. Thass where."
'"Tohn Wayne would have probably just shot me, but William stopped when I said I couldn't go any farther.
"Thass cool. 01' babysan here ain't no lightweight. They feed you too much Da Nang hospital, babysan."
"No way, Gi," Ahn protested. "Feed me tete. Ahn beaucoup hungry."
"Yeah, William beaucoup hungry too." William shrugged Ahn from his back and shrugged his shoulders together to take the stiffness from them.
"You hungry too, mamasan?"
"I sure am. But I don't want to make my meal out of sweets. You haven't seen any rats around, have you?"
"Nah, why?"
"Didn't you guys get that speech in basic about what you do if 're stang and you only have a raw rat and a Hershey bar?"