The authority which had come with writing a successful column on national affairs had settled Raymond considerably, Marco thought, and had made him seem taller and broader. Raymond was thirty years old. He could not have moved up the scale to a better tailor because he had always used the best. He could not have worn whiter linen. His fingernails gleamed. His shoe tips glowed. His color shone. His teeth sparkled. The only fault with the lighting circuit was behind his eyes. Raymond may have believed that his eyes did light up, but unfortunately they could shine only within the extent of his art as a counterfeiter of emotions. Raymond did not feel emotion, and that could not be changed. When he was content he would try to remember how other people had looked when they had manifested happiness or pleasure or satisfaction, and he would attempt to counterfeit the appearance. It was not effective. Raymond’s ability to feel anything resembling either sympathy or empathy was minimal and that was that.

As Raymond listened to Marco’s story with all of his attention he could only understand that an all-out attack had been mounted against his friend and that it had almost destroyed him. He supposed he would be expected to be upset as they went on to talk about that lousy medal which had always been a lot of gas to him—tin-soldier-boy stuff: he had never asked for it, had never wanted it, and if there was some strange way that medal could keep his friend in the Army and get him his health back, then they had to make sure that he found out exactly what that was, and, if necessary, to straighten this out and keep Ben safe, why, for chrissake, he’d even call in Johnny Iselin. He did not say any of this to Marco. He concentrated on trying to counterfeit some of the reactions he felt Marco must expect.

“If what you’ve been dreaming actually happened, Ben,” he said slowly, “then it happened to me and it happened to everyone else on the patrol.”

“Such as Chunjin,” Marco replied.

“How about an investigation?” Raymond said. “That ought to do it.”

“Ought to do what?”

“Uncover what happened that made you dream all that.”

“What kind of an investigation?”

“Well, my mother can always get Johnny Iselin’s committee in the Senate to—”

“Johnny Iselin?” Marco was utterly horrified. “This is Army!”

“What has that go to do with—”

“All right, Raymond. I won’t explain that part. But what happened is inside my head and Melvin’s head and the best head doctors in this country haven’t been able to shake it out and don’t have even the first suspicion of what could be causing it. What could a Senate committee do? And Iselin! Jesus, Raymond, let’s make an agreement never to mention that son-of-a-bitch ever again.”

“It was just an idea. To get started. I know Johnny is a swine better than you do.”

“Then why bring it up?”

“Because we have to dump a thing like this on the specialists. What the hell, Ben, you said so yourself—the Army can’t cope with this. What there has to be, if we’re going to get anywhere with it, is a big, full-scale investigation. You know—somebody has to make people talk.”

“Make who talk?”

“Well—uh—I—”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the patrol. If my Medal of Honor is a fake, and believe me I don’t see how it could be anything else because it doesn’t figure that I’m going to stand up in front of a lot of bullets and be a big hero for that passel of slobs, then somebody has to remember and somebody else has to make the rest of those guys remember that we’ve all been had. That’s all. We’ve been had. If you can’t stand the idea of Johnny Iselin, and I don’t blame you, then I guess you’ll just have to demand your own court-martial.”

“How? What do you mean? What are you talking about?” Marco looked as though he was just beginning to understand what Raymond was talking about, almost but not quite.

“You have to charge yourself with falsifying your report that led to me getting the Medal of Honor and you’ll have to demand that the Army investigate whether or not that was done in collusion with the men of the patrol. That’s all there is to it.”

“They wouldn’t be able to comprehend such a thing. A Medal of Honor—why, a Medal of Honor is a sacred thing to the Army, Raymond. I mean—I—Jesus, the roof would come off the Pentagon.”

“Sure! That’s what I’m saying! Throw it wide open! If the Army can’t understand, then, what the hell, believe me, Iselin’ll understand. He’ll get you off the hook.”

“No. No, never.”

“It’s got to be done the sensational way just to make sure it’s done and that the Army doesn’t get to sit on another ridiculous mistake and let you stay sick like this. What would they care? You’re expendable. But they made a hero out of me so I’m not expendable. They couldn’t take back a mistake as big as this one.”

“Raymond, listen. If it wasn’t for those Soviet generals and those Chinese in that dream, I’d be willing to be expendable.”

“All right. That’s your problem.”

“But with the chance, just the sick chance that there may be such an enormous security risk involved I have to make them dig into this thing. You’re right, Raymond. I have to. I have to.”

“Why should I have gotten a Medal of Honor? I can’t even remember being in the action. I remember the facts about the action, sure. But I don’t remember the action.”

“Talk about it. Keep talking about it. Please.”

“Well, look. Let’s reconstruct. We’re on the patrol. You’ll be at the center of that line and I’ll be off on their right flank. You know? It will be dark. I’ll yell out to you, ‘Captain! Captain Marco! Get me some light twenty yards ahead at two o’clock!’ And you’ll yell back, ‘You got it, kid,’ and very soon a flare will break open and I’ll pour on some enfilade fire on their column and, as everyone who reads comic books knows, I am a very good shooter. I’ll start to move in on them and I’ll take up one of their own heavy machine guns as I go and I’ll move eight of their own grenades up ahead of me as I move along.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Marco said. “But you don’t remember doing all those things.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Raymond answered irritably and impatiently. “Every time I’m directed to think about the action I always know what will happen exactly, but I never get to the place where it actually happens.”

“Do you remember anything about a blackboard? Chinese instructors?”

“No.”

“Memory drills? Anything about a movie projection room and animated cartoons with a sound track in English and a lot of Chinese guys standing around?”

“No.”

“You must have gotten a better brainwashing than I did. Or Melvin.”

“Brainwashing?” Raymond did not like that note. He could not abide the thought of anybody tampering with his person so he rejected the entire business then and there. Others, told the same set of conjectures, might have been fired into action or challenged, but not Raymond. The disgust it made Raymond feel acted like a boathook that pushed the solid shore away from him to allow him to drift away from it on the strong-flowing current of self. It did not mean that he had instantly closed his mind to Marco’s problem. He most earnestly wanted to be able to help Ben find relief, to help to change his friend’s broken mechanism, to find him sleep and rest and health, but his own participation in what he had started out to make a flaming patriotic crusade when he had first started to speak had been muted by his fastidiousness: he shrank from what he could only consider the rancid vulgarity of brainwashing.

“It has to be a brainwash,” Marco said intensely. “In my case it slipped. In Melvin’s case it slipped. It’s the only possible explanation, Raymond. The only, only explanation.”

“Why?” Raymond answered coldly. “Why would the Communists want me to get a Medal of Honor?”