Therefore, Michael decided, neither could he.

And he had to protect himself…

He finally signed that last bitter recommendation.

Snake now faced what the staff called Intensive Reeducation.

Snake, being Snake, would understand. And probably not hold a grudge. He was, himself, a disciple of the doctrine of doing what had to be done.

He was still in Intensive when, a month later, on the eve of the arrival of his next class, Michael finally found the nerve to check on his friend.

They had put Snake into the Crystal Palace, a hexagonal, furnitureless, featureless cell where all the surfaces were mirrors. One-way. Snake couldn't see out but his tormentors could see in. Powerful kliegs pushed enough light through to keep the interior blindingly bright. Sometimes the technicians added deafening white sound, though they preferred recordings of Snake's own mad ravings. Sometimes they turned up the heat, or starved him, or made him do without water. They never actually touched him, let him see them, or did him physical harm. Harm was forbidden by the director. The goal was a broken will, not a broken body.

He had to be made to feel alone. Naked and alone. Not a stitch of clothing, never a human touch or word. That had pushed many a stubborn man past his limit.

But Snake had been alone all his life.

While he was on a no-sleep program the technicians would give him an electric shock if he threatened to drift off. Or they might set the gimbled cell slowly spinning and tumbling.

He was supposed to lose his belief in the fixity, the predictability of his environment, and in elementary concepts of fairness. He was supposed to begin hating the men he saw reflected wherever he looked. Once he wanted rid of the old Snake, the academy staff would begin building him a new one. In a more useful mold.

But Snake had been through all that before, on his own, and had put himself together in his present form.

"How's he coming?" Michael asked the technician on duty.

"Slow. Can't seem to reach him. He just takes it. You know him. Any ideas?"

"I never knew him under normal conditions. From what he told me, he never lived normally. His father was a wife-beater, child batterer, and child molester. He just hid back inside himself so far that nothing could reach him. Before he ever got to high school, let alone the army."

"Is he afraid of anything?"

"Not that I know of. I don't think he even cares if he stays alive. If you kill him, he figures he's beaten you that way too. He's never had anything to lose. How do you get a handle on a guy like that?"

"Every man holds something too precious to lose." The technician consulted his charts, pushed a button. The Crystal Palace began tumbling slowly. "Next time he passes out I'll move him to the Closet. See how he likes that. He's got me ready to start experimenting."

"Why not bring him out, shape him up, and run him through orientation again? See how he reacts to a chance to get into a less rigorous program. Let the contrasts sink in. If he doesn't reform, give him the Closet at the end of the week."

The Closet was a cell sixty centimeters by sixty centimeters by two meters high. Not absolutely impossible. But all its faces were featureless, and there was no light or sound once its door closed. It had broken some tough men.

Michael hoped Snake wouldn't have to go in. He dreaded the Closet so much himself that he willingly risked compromising himself to save his friend that hell.

"It might help. All right. Pick him up tomorrow afternoon."

Michael scarcely concealed his relief.

He owed Snake. Maybe his life, from the march…

"What're his interests? His politics?"

"Music was the only thing he cared about. Only time I heard him complain was when a Vietnamese soldier stole his harmonica. He could play the guitar, too, and, I think, the piano. He was in a band before he joined the army. Politically, you'd have to call him an anarchist."

"Bakuninite?"

"No. Nothing that nihilist. He just wants government to leave him alone. Not to tax him, or draft him, or to do things to him for his own good, I really don't think he can understand the differences between Marxism and capitalism. All he sees is that states are states. They all impose on their citizens."

This was dangerous stuff. For his own welfare he shouldn't be saying it, even to express Snake's beliefs.

But the technician just looked bewildered. The ideas were too alien. Cash didn't go on. It would be like explaining color to a man blind from birth.

"I'll fix a bunk for him then. Tomorrow afternoon, right? Well, I'd better get moving. Got things to do before the plane gets in." He wanted out before the technician got to thinking that Snake might contaminate the incoming class.

Michael stared into the Crystal Palace for several seconds, though, before he left. His guts tightened into a walnut of agony. Snake, why can't you just go along? he wondered. Fake it if you have to, dammit.

He put the thought to Cantrell the following Friday, once it became certain that he faced Intensive again.

Snake was spacy all week. He needed guiding through anything he didn't know as old military routine.

"No," Cantrell replied, eyes fixed on some distant illusion of peace.

Cash, perhaps wishfully, had expected Snake to be eager to please after the Crystal Palace. But obstinance possessed the man. It kept tearing through his remoteness all week.

"Why the hell not?" Try to help a guy…

"I can't."

"Snake, please!" He fought to keep his voice soft, his expression neutral. There would be observers.

A thin, weak smile stretched Cantrell's lips. "Thanks, Mike." For an infinitesimal fraction of a second his fingers touched the back of the hand Michael held squeezed into a bloodless fist. His touch was light as a spider's kiss. "You don't understand. You never will. You can't. Not without being me."

It took Cash two years to figure out what Snake had been thanking him for. For Snake's sake that was just as well. It would have been used against him earlier.

He was thanking Michael for caring. No one in his past ever had.

Cantrell did his month in the Closet. Then they dusted him off and ran him through orientation again.

And he failed again.

And they did it all over again.