"No… No, you're one guy I trust completely."

"Good. You see, I've got the sight. I see things other people don't. It wasn't Shorty Lyle that was scared."

They kept walking, a thoughtful Shorty looking at the path in front of his boots. Finally he looked up at Macurdy. "You're a strange guy, you know?"

"Yep, I am. For me it's the only way to be. But we won't tell anyone what happened."

Shorty put a hand on Macurdy's arm, and they stopped. "You're not only a helluva man, Macurdy," he said, "you're one helluva friend. Sure as shit, though, someone's going to ask what happened that I can jump now-Sergeant Bryant for sure-and I'd like to tell him it was talking to you that did it. Okay? But I won't tell him what happened."

Macurdy grinned. "Okay. But now you owe me a beer, for services rendered."

They arrived back at the barracks not actually drunk, but Shorty was a bit oiled. They'd obviously been in a scuffle somewhere, but weren't much the worse for it.

And on Monday, Shorty jumped next in the stick behind Macurdy. Without difficulty, and found himself hooked on parachuting.

After qualifying as jumpers, they were sent to the expansion area in Alabama for advanced training. On completion, Macurdv was one of a handful promoted to private first class. Afterward the troopers were assigned to various new regiments in training, except for a few, including Macurdy, who were assigned to 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, in England, as replacements for men injured in training, or lost for other reasons.

13

Leave

Because they were headed overseas, the men assigned to the 503rd were given leave-two weeks plus travel time. Macurdy gave his destination as Nehtaka, Oregon, but went first to Salem, Indiana, where Charley and Edna met him at the depot.

They hadn't seen their youngest son for more than nine years, and Edna hugged him, weeping, a remarkable display of emotion for a Macurdy. Charley simply stared. "Good God," he breathed when Curtis was able to give him his attention. "You're another one. You haven't aged a day." Then he too embraced their son.

Curtis spent two days with them, and his parents told him some old family lore, stories he hadn't heard before-that very few had in his generation. His great great gram pa was said not to have aged. He'd disappeared when his oldest boy reached seventeen, only to turn up again, briefly, on one leg and two crutches, at the end of the Civil War. Even then he'd looked young, though scar-faced and short a limb like so many who were young. To learn that his wife had died sixteen years earlier. His two sons recognized him when he told them who he was, but at his request referred to him as "Cousin Martin from back east."

But after "Cousin Martin" was gone again, one of them told his wife who their visitor had been, and the story leaked to others in the family. But not all, and mostly it stopped there. Until one of the "old man's" grandchildren-one of Edna's uncles, who was also a second cousin of Charley's-had left his wife and children when he was thirty-six and looked about twenty-five. Left without warning, but semi-regularly had wired money from California until about 1915.

"You can probably understand how we felt when Varia didn't age," Charley said. "We thought she might be one of my cousin's kids by some second wife out west. Although from what you told us before, I guess she couldn't have been."

Edna took Curtis's hand. "And now here you are, thirty-eight years old and still so young looking, no older than Frank's oldest boy. And married, you say."

Curtis nodded. "Mary knows about me. About how I don't age. I told her before we got engaged, and she married me anyway. I guess it wasn't all that real to her then; even I wasn't entirely sure. And of course, she's still not quite twenty-six. We'll probably leave Nehtaka when the war's over." If I'm still alive, he added silently.

Liiset, or whichever of Varia's clones it had been, had returned just once, a few months after Curtis had left. After that it was as if the Sisterhood had given up on him. So Curtis gave his parents his Nehtaka address.

His reception in Nehtaka was also marked by hugs and tears. The next day he got hold of some black market gas, and in their '35 Chevy, he and Mary drove south down the coast, where they rented a cabin and spent three days alone, walking the beach, hiking the old spruce forest, watching the surf beat on massive black boulders and ledges… and loving each other. It seemed to both of them they were more in love than ever.

His leave melted like snow on the stove, but when Mary delivered him to the train, she didn't cry. She waited till she got home. And Klara, the tough old Prussian peasant widow, half blind now and three-quarters crippled, comforted her granddaughter. The old woman's tears were for the young wife, not the soldier. Soldiers were expected to die.

14

England

England's southern ports were often visited by German bombers, thus the 503rd replacements disembarked in Greenock, Scotland. There they were put on a train and taken south, almost the length of Britain, to rural Berkshire County, where 2nd Battalion 503rd was camped in Nissen Huts on a sprawling manorial estate called Chilton Foliat.

Only the 2nd Battalion was in England; the rest of the regiment remained in the States. 2nd Battalion was proud, cocky, and close-knit, and replacements like Macurdy were looked upon at first as outsiders. Especially in his squad, where he'd replaced a happy-go-lucky sort of wildman named Joe Potenza. Private Potenza was currently in the stockade, and would be for another five months, for starting a fight while on a weekend pass in London, a brawl that had seriously embarrassed the Army. Previously in trouble for starting a fight with British servicemen, he'd been treated as an example by the American high command.

In his squad, several resented Potenza's replacement, and one morning Macurdy awakened to- find his boot laces cut from the bottom up. That evening he went to each member of the squad and asked if he'd done it, at the same time observing the man's auric reaction. When he found the culprit, a private named Carlson, he hit him without warning-whop! in the forehead with the heel of his hand. Carlson dropped like a stone.

Unfortunately, Carlson was about five feet eight inches and one hundred fifty pounds, so this did not commend Macurdy to the rest of the squad. The next night a trooper named Cargill who'd been Potenza's closest friend, came into the but and saw Macurdy asleep with no cover. Carefully he slipped a safety match head-first between Macurdy's toes, then? the other end and gave him a barefooted hotfoot. Macurdy awoke with a yell, then looked around and found Cargill glaring at him, jaw set. "I did it, asshole," Cargill said. "Now let's see if you've got theguts to tackle someone your own size."

Actually Cargill, though about as tall, was twenty pounds lighter than Macurdy. Macurdy didn't quibble though; he went outside with Cargill and beat the snot out of him. After that, the majority, who'd accepted him in the first place, were Macurdy's buddies; he was their kind of man.

Meanwhile, though he had a nasty burn between his toes, Macurdy didn't report the injury or go on sick call. He handled it himself, with a shamanic technique.

The next morning in the Nissen, Cargill apologized through swollen lips. "Macurdy, I was an asshole to bum your foot yesterday. I know it's not your fault that Potenza's in the stockade. All I can say is, I loved him like a brother. We all did. You'd have to know him."

"I've got no argument with that," Macurdy answered. "People ought to stand up for their buddies. But if I'm not willing to stand up for myself, I've got no business being here."