Macurdy stared. The man's broad back was to him, but it was a back he knew, and the bull neck was familiar. Both went with the voice.

"Anybody else hurt since I left?" Keith asked.

"Not bad. What does the doc say about getting out of here?"

"Four more weeks, then rehab. I'll be as good as new" Macurdy interrupted. "Damn it, Keith! I wish you'd get a pretty girl visitor, instead of a big mean Indian logger from Oregon."

Roy Klaplanahoo spun and stared. "Macurdy!" he said. "What are you doing here?"

The next twenty minutes was a three-way conversation that ended with Keith and Macurdy knowing one another much better than they might have without Klaplanahoo's presence. All three had been loggers, Keith mainly a pulper and tie hack from Upper Michigan; it added a bond between the two patients.

"Macurdy is a healer," Klaplanahoo told him. "I seen him heal a bad cut a guy got in a knife fight. In a hobo jungle outside Miles City, Montana. And a couple guys that got shot in a logging camp. He does it like a shaman, except he don't use a drum." He turned to Macurdy. "I'll bet you been working on that leg."

Macurdy grinned, and lowered his voice for privacy. "They told me I'd be here at least two months. I gave myself ten days at most."

Keith looked intensely at him, and lowered his voice too. "They'll never believe it. They'll keep you two months regardless."

"Maybe I'll get a little help from my friends. Maybe a hacksaw."

"There's no bars on the windows here."

"To get this cast off. A saw will go through it like nothing. Then I can break it off."

Keith's gaze went out of focus; he was thinking. "You serious?" he asked.

"Damn right."

"I could get a hacksaw," Klaplanahoo murmured.

And that just about finished the conversation. All three men had something to think about. Macurdy decided to give more time to his leg. Ten days had been a guess. Maybe he could shorten that a few days.

Later that day Keith murmured to him: "Macurdy, I'm worried my outfit will leave me behind. Can you really heal people? Broken legs?"

"I guarantee it."

"Guarantee is a pretty strong word." Macurdy nodded.

"How about healing me?"

"As tong as you're willing."

"How do you go about it?"

"If I can't reach it with my hands, I do it with my eyes." Keith looked doubtfully at him. "Show me."

Macurdy put his attention on the aura around the elevated leg, then the good one, then the broken one again, and began to manipulate the thread-like energy lines, working on them for several minutes with eyes and intention. The lines tended to slip back the way they'd been, but when they did, he simply readjusted them. After ten minutes they were behaving pretty well, and he could sense Keith's body cooperating.

It's as if, he told himself, the energy threads make a kind of template, an energy skeleton for the body-flesh, bones,skin and all. Fix the template, and the rest of it goes along. At east it acted that way. He wasn't going to ask the doctors what they thought of the idea though.

"That's enough for now," he said. "I'll work more on it after a while."

Keith regarded the leg uncertainly. It seemed to him he could feel a difference. By God, he told himself hopefully, maybe this'll work. It just might.

A number of times on each of the next several days, Macurdy worked both on his own leg and Keith's for about ten minutes each. Already on the second day, Keith felt enthused, certain he could feel it working. At the end of a week, Macurdy felt sure that either of them could get up and walk, but he knew the medics wouldn't hear of it.

Meanwhile all he had for clothes was a ridiculous little green hospital gown with his bare ass hanging out. By then he'd had visitors himself-the battalion didn't train the time- and when Cavalieri and Luoma showed up that evening, he asked them to smuggle a set of his class A khakis to him.

Their expressions changed from cheerful to unhappy. It was Cavalieri who answered him. "Jesus, Macurdy, I'd sure as hell like to, but-"

"But what?"

"They-they took your clothes. This morning."

"What! Who took them?"

"We weren't going to tell you, but you've been transferred."

"Transferred Where?"

Cavalieri could hardly bring himself to say the words. "To the MPs. It's in your records that you were a deputy sheriff, and the sawbones said you won't be able to jump anymore, or anything like that, so…" He shrugged. "They latched onto you. Your khakis went to your new outfit, your jumpsuit and CTs to supply. Maybe I could get your boots back though, and bring them to you."

Macurdy seemed to collapse for a moment. "Shit." He paused. "I've got to think about this." Then he changed the subject, asking what the battalion had been doing, an didn't mention the matter again, except to take up Cavalieri's offer on the boots. He'd like to have them for old times sake, he said.

The best thing he could do now, it seemed to him, was act resigned to it.

After Cavalieri and Luoma left, he wondered briefly if maybe he should resign himself to it. MP duty was unpopular-at least MPs were-but someone had to do it, and it was relatively safe. As an MP, he'd likely return alive to his wife, while as a paratrooper, his prospects were doubtful.

On the other hand, he wondered, not for the first time, if Mary might not be better off if he didn't come home. Their future as a couple held decades of relocations, while she grew old and he remained young.

But his decision didn't grow out of that. It simply seemed to him he was supposed to be airborne. For better or worse, he'd spent most of his life heeding his deeper feelings, and for better or worse, he'd follow them now.

So he had a serious discussion with Keith, their voices scarcely louder than whispers. When it was over, he gave some attention to Keith's leg again. The thread-like lines of energy around it looked pretty much normal, so he concentrated on increased blood flow. He didn't pay much attention to his own leg anymore. It seemed to him he didn't need to.

The next day the company supply clerk sent out Macurdy's boots, by a guy pulling fatigue duty; Cavalieri was off on a training problem. After checking the boots for a bottle, the duty nurse told him to put them under Macurdy's bed.

Roy Klaplanahoo stopped by that evening as early as he could. The three troopers plotted briefly in undertones, then he left. Two hours later he was back. He could never get away with bringing in a package; the nurses and orderlies would suspect booze, and search it. But inside his Class A khaki shirt required wear on pass-he wore a second, both tucked into the outer of the two pairs of khaki trousers he had on. He carried the hacksaw blade in two belt loops of the inner pair; Macurdy would have to make do without a frame for it. All in all, Roy felt both conspicuous and uncomfortable, but it was twilight out, and no one paid much attention to him. After looking around nervously, he took off the outer pants, then the outer shirt, and put them under a sheet. The blade he tucked under the edge of Macurdy's mattress.

"Can you cut off the cast yourself?" he murmured worriedly. "I'll manage. Later, when it's darker."

Both Macurdy and Keith shook hands with Roy then, and the Indian left.

It was after midnight when Macurdy did it. The leg didn't look as bad as he thought it might. His healing actions had done more than repair bone, muscle, and connective tissue; they'd reduced the discoloration to a pale greenish yellow, and atrophy was minor.

In the small ward, he was the only man fully awake. Roy's pants and sleeves were a little short, but beyond that, the fit was decent. After cloaking himself with his invisibility spell, Macurdy left carrying his boots. The saw blade he'd left with Keith. No one looked up as he padded barefoot down the corridor and past the nurses' station.