The crowd went insane. Mark had his eyes squeezed shut and his palms pressed over his ears in a futile effort to shut the horrific visions from his brain. “That good a show, huh?” he heard Croyd comment, through his hands and the mob’s fierce ecstasy.

He dropped his hands and opened his eyes. Tears poured forth. “I don’t understand,” he sobbed. “We’re supposed to be struggling for, for brotherhood and tolerance. But here the colonel’s deliberately trying to whip up race hatred for the nats!”

He shook his head. “What’s going on, man? What’s going on?”

Croyd took his cigar from his mouth and surveyed the scene with fine amphetamine detachment. “Looks like Armageddon to me,” he said.

“You sound like you approve of all this!” Mark said, pitching his reproof to carry above the bloodlust cries of the mob.

Croyd produced a lizard shrug. “Hey, I don’t have any problem with kicking nat ass. Nats never did much for me; shit, they hunted me like a dog, back when I was being Typhoid Croyd. Croak ’em all; no scales off my ass.”

He paused, looked confused. “Except my family. But they, they’re far away. Yeah, that’s it. They’re out of it. So fuck a bunch of nats. Fuck ’em!”

He was shivering and babbling now. The hellbrew of amphetamines he was pumping through his system to fend off sleep was starting to kick him over into delirium.

Mark provided his friend with stimulants because Croyd asked him to; what Croyd did with them was Croyd’s responsibility and Croyd’s concern. Croyd the Sleeper never articulated it, but he had a deep fear of sleep, almost pathological in its intensity, and Mark knew why: there was no knowing when Croyd would wake up to find the wild card had dealt him the Black Queen. If there was one thing worse than being an enormous pink bat or a great big skink, it was being dead.

But Mark had purely selfish reasons for wanting Croyd awake. Croyd was his sole friend, his sole ally, a raft of comradeship in a strange and murderous sea. If he nodded off, for days or weeks or even months, Mark would be all alone.

There was Eric, of course. But he was Moonchild’s connection; he had no interest in Mark. Mark suspected that if Eric knew the truth about where Moonchild came from, he would not be so interested in her either. He’d care, he felt her think. He’d still care. He’s very caring.

Mark looked at Eric, discreet and powerful. He shuddered.

“Colonel? Colonel Sobel, sir?”

One of the Colonel’s flying wedge of escorts laid hard hands on Mark as he tried to intercept Sobel on his march back to his quarters. Sobel recognized Mark, nodded them off. They fell back, glaring hate.

Sobel put a hand on Mark’s shoulder, brought him along. “Walk with me, son. What’s on your mind?”

“Sir, I’m, uh – I’m not, like, trying to criticize or anything, but didn’t it seem like you were trying to stir up anti-nat sentiments with your speech tonight?”

“Hell, yes. I was.” He laughed at Mark’s confused expression. “I was trying to instill fighting spirit in a unit that’s still pretty much civilian, a unit that’s trying to cope with taking real-life casualties for the first time. You don’t do that by beating around any bushes.”

“But isn’t that racist? I thought the Brigade was about tolerance.”

“The New Joker Brigade is about two things. One: atonement. Two: survival. It’s us against the nats, son. Here in Vietnam we have a chance to carve out a sanctuary for the wild cards. A place to build a better life, based on sharing and caring, socialist discipline and solidarity. A beachhead from which to take on the whole corrupt, capitalist, white bread nat world. I don’t see much room for sentiment in that agenda. Do you?

“Besides, toleration is a dead white-male concept. It has no relevance to the oppressed. To what we’re doing here and now.”

Mark felt like crying. This wasn’t the way he’d expected it to go. And now – damn Croyd! – he felt as if he were betraying his father, in the doubts that surged unchecked through him now.

Distraught, he blurted another question that was eating at him: “Why aren’t there any Vietnamese jokers in camp?”

“There are no jokers in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

“That’s craz – I mean, that can’t be true. The wild card virus was dispersed widely enough -”

Sobel faced him, laid hands on his shoulders. “Son,” he said, “you ask a lot of questions. I appreciate how concerned you are, and I admire your ethics. Truly I do. But remember, you left the normal nat concept of civil liberties back home when you left the white-bread USA. And also remember, a lot of communities these days are taking steps to protect themselves against people asking the wrong kind of questions.”

“The wrong kind of questions?”

“Destructive questions. Insensitive questions. Questions that stir up bad feeling or dissent. A lot of our American colleges are taking the lead in that these days.

“Asking too many questions will weaken us here, what we’re doing here. That hurts jokers everywhere.”

Mark tried to speak. Words would not come.

“Don’t bother yourself with questions, son.” The Colonel smiled and patted Mark on the shoulder. “The time for questions is past.”

He walked away and left Mark standing.

Fueled by repression, desertion, ethnic and sectional tensions, and the Socialist Republic’s lack of economic progress compared to its noncommunist neighbors, full-scale guerrilla war flamed up. Determined not to be among the last few communist dominoes to topple, the Republic reacted with fury. The New Joker Brigade was thrust into the fire.

Squads began coming back to Venceremos with hairy tales of firefights and nighttime ambushes. And more. Several young-bloods began strutting around with necklaces of human ears. Swaggering talk of torture, mutilation, and village massacre made the mess-hall rounds.

Not everyone approved of the atrocity talk, among either the Originals or the new kids. There were angry words in the mess, shoving incidents, out-and-out brawls.

Then, the night after Mark and his squad had returned from a grueling two-week patrol in the Highlands, the Joker Brigade original named Tabasco was stabbed and left to die on the parade ground.

“How could that happen?” Moonchild asked. She was lying naked on her side next to Eric, beneath a blanket to fend off the surprising night chill, listening to rain drum dully on the sandbag-reinforced roof

Eric lay on his back with his hands behind his head, staring at the play of shadows thrown on the ceiling by the single fish-oil candle. “How could what happen, babe?”

“The murder of that man. Tabasco. Who would do such a thing?”

Eric shrugged. “Tabasco pressured a lot of people. He made enemies.”

Moonchild pulled herself up on one elbow. “Pressured people? How? About what?”

“Some of the things going down out in the bush. He was hung up on old times, how the New Brigade had to make up for all the bad things he and his buddies did way back when.” He shook his head. “He didn’t seem to realize that that war’s over and done with. It’s history. It has no bearing.”

She frowned. “You sound almost as if you approve of his murder.”

“When people start getting shot at, it changes them. Changes their outlook. You go ragging on them at your own risk.”

“I can hardly believe you are so callous. He was criticizing people who bragged of murder, of rape. Terrible crimes.”

He looked at her with half a smile. “Are there really such things as crimes in a war? Look, the people who are suffering are deserters and traitors. They’re a threat to the Socialist Republic.”

He put his fingers beneath her chin, raised her face. Tear-trails shone on her cheeks. “Besides, they don’t think we’re human. They think anyone touched by the wild card is a devil. They’d do worse to us.”