When the girl wrapped up the gown, it seemed to take up no space at all. It didn't weigh anything, either. Maybe it wasn't silk after all. Maybe some clever Chinaman had figured out how to curdle air, just a little.

Pete got out of Ken Kee's as if the place had caught fire behind him. The salesgirl didn't laugh at his retreat, but he could feel her amused eyes on his back. How many guys had she seen sneaking out of there? It wasn't as if he were buying dirty pictures, dammit. He paused out on the sidewalk on Yates Road. Dirty pictures only promised. This nightgown would deliver. Boy, would it ever!

But he wasn't completely stupid. The next time he saw Vera, he gave her the jade tree first. "Got something for you, babe," he said, as casually as he could.

"Chto?" That meant What? When you caught her by surprise, she still sometimes came out with Russian without thinking. He'd got some real wrapping paper from a clerk at the consulate, so the tree looked nicer now than it had when he took it out of the shop. Vera's quick, clever fingers stripped off the paper and the cotton wool. "Ahh," she said. "It is very pretty, Pete." Chances were she could guess to the penny what he'd paid for it, too. By the warmth of the kiss she gave him, she approved. "We go out now?"

They went out. He was throwing away money like a drunken sailor-like a drunken Marine-but he didn't care. Not while he was with Vera he didn't, anyhow.

They ate. They drank. They danced. They drank. By the time they went back to her little chamber, he was a drunken Marine. Not too drunk, though. He hoped.

With an air of suddenly remembering, he pulled the smaller package from an inside pocket. "This is for you, too," he said. If she didn't like it… Would dying on the spot or wishing he were dead be worse?

She wasn't quite so deft unwrapping this one; she'd also been knocking them back. "Ahh," she said once more, this time on a different note. She unfolded the gown and held it up. It still might as well have not been there. She gave him a slow sidelong smile. "For myself, darling, I would not buy this. I would not wear this. For you… Do you want me to?"

"Jesus, do I!" he said hoarsely. "Do you gotta ask?"

Asking was part of the game. Vera understood that, even if Pete didn't. She also understood enough to walk behind him and say, "Not to turn around until I am telling you." A pause. Faint rustlings. "Okay now."

He turned. She looked even better than he'd imagined, and he hadn't thought such a thing possible. He took her in his arms. Somehow, the silk also made her feel more like a woman than she ever had before, and she'd always felt about as much like a woman as a woman could feel.

And he wasn't too drunk. Oh, no. That turned out to be better than ever, too. One more time, he hadn't dreamt it could.

SERGEANT CARRASQUEL GLOWERED in the direction of downtown Madrid, only a few kilometers away but as unreachable as the bottom of the sea or the mountains of the moon. "Stupid bastards," he snarled at no one in particular. "They brought us here to take the capital away from the Republic, but we're farther away than we were right after we came up from Gibraltar."

"It's those damned Internationals, Sergeant." Joaquin Delgadillo knew he had to soften up the underofficer before Carrasquel started throwing around extra duty or dangerous assignments. "If they hadn't got between us and the city, we might be in there by now."

"That's what she said," Carrasquel retorted. "Just shows the brass has its head up its ass, that's all."

"You didn't say things like that when Marshal Sanjurjo came up to look things over," Joaquin said slyly.

"I said plenty. What good would more have done?" Carrasquel replied. "He is a marshal. He talked nice to me, but to the likes of him a sergeant isn't even a squashed turd on the sole of his boot." He looked around. "I won't go on about taking things up the ass where Major Uribe can hear me, either. He'd think it was a good idea."

Joaquin giggled, deliciously scandalized. "He's got cojones," he said in what might or might not have been reproof.

"Sure he does," the sergeant agreed. "And he'd like 'em to be slapping the backside of some pretty little boy-or he'd like some big manly fellow's cojones slapping his backside. Or maybe both?"

"Both?" The straitlaced private hadn't thought of that. Could you both do and be done by? He supposed you could, but… "?Madre de Dios!"

"She hasn't got any cojones. I'm sure of that. Hell, she didn't even get Joseph's," Carrasquel said.

This time, Delgadillo didn't answer right away. He was scandalized all over again, and not so deliciously this time. At last, stiffly, he said, "If you're going to make filthy jokes about the Virgin, you really should fight for the Republic." Everybody knew the people on the other side hated God-and He hated them, too.

"God understands me," Carrasquel said. "If a snot-nosed private doesn't, I won't lose sleep over it."

Major Uribe had said that God forgave his love life. Everybody seemed to think God would be soft on him in particular, even if all the other sinners running around loose would roast on Satan's grill forever, with demons sticking pitchforks into them every so often to turn them and make sure they cooked evenly on all sides. Joaquin didn't think God worked that way. It wasn't as if God had told him He didn't-God didn't waste time talking to a snot-nosed private. But that was how it looked to him.

"Go liberate some firewood." Sergeant Carrasquel talked to him, all right. "If you've got the time to jaw with me, you've got the time to do some real work." With a martyred sigh, Joaquin started scrounging. He'd tried to keep Carrasquel sweet-tempered, and look what he got for it! Nobody else would sympathize, either. The rest of the guys would just be glad he was busting his butt and they weren't.

To add injury to insult, Major Uribe chose him to join a raiding party that night. "We need some prisoners, sweethearts," Uribe lisped. "We always need prisoners. Have to keep track of what the dirty Reds are up to. They're going straight to hell, and you can count on it." He crossed himself.

So did Delgadillo. He also started working the beads on his rosary. How many prayers would he need to stay safe in a trench raid? The probable number struck him as unpleasantly large. He worked the beads harder. Hail, Mary, full of grace. Don't listen to the foul-mouthed sergeant. That wasn't your standard Ave Maria, but it came from the bottom of his heart.

After he got done with the rosary, Joaquin fixed the bayonet on his rifle-something he hardly ever did-and sharpened one edge of the blade on his entrenching tool. Trench raiding was close-quarters fighting at its nastiest. A couple of the men in the raiding party carried machine pistols, to fill the air around them with lead. Major Uribe had a sword-not an officer's ceremonial sword, but a shorter, fatter blade, almost a pirate's cutlass. Christ only knew where he'd found it. By the way he made it wheep! through the air as he limbered up in the Nationalist trenches, he knew what to do with it. And it went without saying that he would lead the party himself. No matter how queer he was, he never sent men where he wouldn't go himself.

No moon tonight. That was good. Light wouldn't betray the raiders as they crawled toward the Republican lines. A few hundred meters away, some of the other soldiers in the Nationalist trenches started shooting at the enemy. As Major Uribe had hoped, the Republicans fired back. With luck, the racket would cover any little noises the raiding party made.

With luck! What beautiful words those were! Joaquin had thought about that before, usually when artillery dropped too close. It crossed his mind again as he scrambled out of the trench and slithered forward.