"Oh, God," groaned Davidson as he pulled a threadbare pillow out from under his head and attempted to smother himself with it.

Moose waited patiently for another minute before asking whether Slim Jim was planning on getting up. They could already hear the mail being handed out in the distance.

"C'mon, Slim Jim, maybe some Girl Guide sent you some cookies."

"Unless she sent me a picture of her fanny I couldn't care less," he moped.

"Slim Jim!"

Moose seemed genuinely offended that anyone could sully the image of the Girl Guides of America. As far as he was concerned, protecting them from the ravages of the Japs was one of the main reasons they were here, camping out in this godforsaken burned-out cane field.

"I'll tell you what, Moose," Davidson said finally, "if I get any Girl Guide cookies, you bring 'em back for me, and we'll share them."

"Is that a promise?"

"You can bank on it. Just let me get some rest."

Moose hurried off in pursuit of free cookies. Davidson thought about whipping his shank out for a quick pull, but he couldn't even work up the enthusiasm for that. He lay on his cot, scratching his balls until a thought occurred to him. Checking that Moose really was gone, he rolled to his feet and dragged his duffel bag out. The flexipad was at the bottom, and it took some digging to retrieve it. When at last he had the stolen pad in his hands, it felt heavy with possibilities.

A quick check out the tent flap again. No sign of Moose. Davidson smiled as he powered up the unit. He'd become quite adept at controlling it and quickly found the file he'd been meaning to check out. A few taps on the touch screen and suddenly he nearly wet himself at the sound of a nigger band-called Death Row of all fucking things-punching out a weird number called "Rape the Bitch Now." The title had intrigued him since he'd first seen it a day earlier. The jigaboos sounded like they were doing some really angry, fucked-up poems to a jungle beat and it was hard to understand everything they said.

He dropped the volume and shook his head in disbelief throughout the two-minute performance. It took him three repeats to fully understand the lyrics, and when he did, he struggled with a tangled mass of feelings. He found that for the first time in his life, he was genuinely affronted. His morality-Could you believe it? His fucking morality!-was actually outraged by those fucking hoods. But contending with that outrage was excitement at the images that accompanied the "music." He'd never seen women dance like that, not even in the skankiest fucking New Orleans whorehouse. Those hussies were like damn dogs in heat, the way they were throwing their fannies around.

"Goddamn," Slim Jim hooted softly. "The future looks rosy!"

He cycled through another performance by Death Row. It sounded so similar that he couldn't be certain, if he closed his eyes, that he was listening to a different song-if you could even call it a song. But the new clip featured an entirely different bunch of "bitches," as he quickly and effortlessly came to think of them, and Slim Jim had no trouble at all telling one bitch from another. He was about to revisit his decision not to haul his shank out for a quick one, when he heard the heavy tread of Moose Molly approaching. Davidson hastily shut down the pad and jammed it under a blanket.

"Hey Slim Jim, you're up."

"And at 'em."

The big oaf had a package for him. If it was cookies, it was the biggest pack he'd ever seen. Davidson pushed himself up on one elbow. He was slick and sticky with sweat. The tent felt like the inside of an oven.

"You got laundry," Moose said as he tossed over the package.

"Laundry? I didn't send no fucking laundry out," said Davidson.

"You must have left some with the Chinese place before we shipped out for Midway," said Moose.

"Chinese?" said Davidson, suddenly coming wide awake. "Yeah, now that I think of it, I did leave some pants behind."

"You're always losing your pants, Slim Jim."

"Ain't it the truth? What'd you get, buddy?"

"Just a letter from my old man. He says they're having real trouble keeping the spics in line now that a lot of the younger fellows have left the police force for the army. But he reckons the old boys on the force, they still got a few tricks in them."

"I'll bet," said Davidson.

"And I spoke to Chief Craven, he said Chief Mohr's gonna be out of the hospital tomorrow and there's no way we're shipping out with the other guys. We're staying here."

"Well, you gotta take the good with the bad," shrugged Slim Jim, who'd die a happy man if he never set foot on another goddamn boat.

"You gonna open your package?"

"For a pair of pants? No. I'd thought I'd save the excitement for this evening. Give me something to look forward to in the cocktail hour."

And it was early evening before Moose left the tent again, giving Davidson a chance to tear open the brown paper parcel. He found a couple of shirts inside, and two pairs of socks. Wrapped up in one pair was an IOU from Big Itchy for six thousand dollars, payable when next they met.

A grin as big as the Grand Canyon broke out on Slim Jim's face. He could almost feel that money in the tips of his fingers. A lot of guys would have wanted it right there with them in the cot, thinking they could keep it safe that way. But Slim Jim Davidson knew his dough was more secure locked up in the strongbox beneath Big Itchy's desk. Any sticky fingers straying near the combination lock were liable to get themselves hacked off with a machete.

There was a note with the IOU.

"Got any more ideas?"

The two men sat in the shaded portico that ran around the hospital, sipping at iced water and squinting into the glare of the midday sun. Eddie Mohr was in far better shape than Lieutenant Commander Evans. The funny little gizmo they'd stuck on the back of his neck seemed to block all the pain he should have been feeling from his cracked skull and stitched-up wounds. But he found that he still got dizzy if he had to walk very far. Evans had it tougher. His ruined arm was encased in one of those fat, blow-up sausages and he told Mohr that most of his arm wasn't even his anymore. They'd grown it in a test tube.

"Musta been a big fucking tube, sir," said Mohr.

"More of a vat, they told me," said Evans.

The Astoria's senior enlisted man shook his head at the idea. Eddie Mohr had spent a good part of his life on the floor of a slaughterhouse. He wasn't a squeamish guy, but the idea of growing your own meat in a glass bowl made him feel distinctly giddy. Still, there were friends of his alive because of it, and because they'd been cracked open and fitted with mechanical hearts, and plastic bones, and Christ only knew what else.

Rumor had it that one guy off the Hornet was sporting a brand-new dick. Two inches longer than his old one!

Mohr wondered if you could put a request in for that sort of thing.

Other casualties meandered slowly about the grounds under their own power, or were pushed about in wheelchairs by nurses. The sun was so fierce it hurt to look at their white uniforms, unless you were wearing sunglasses. It seemed that almost everyone from the future did just that, even indoors. It was just another of the many things about them that made Eddie Mohr's head spin.

He felt himself dozing off, nodding forward in his cane chair, until Evans's voice cut through his torpor.

"Do you hear anything about Captain Anderson?" he asked.

The topic had hung between them like an unspoken curse, and Mohr found himself looking for eavesdroppers before he replied. He'd learned that not everyone appreciated or understood his respect for the late commander of the Leyte Gulf. In fact, there'd been some ugliness over it.

He leaned over to Evans and lowered his voice. "The way I hear it, they collected enough evidence at the scene to nail whoever done it, if they can figure out whoever done it."