"Why?" he asked warily.

"Because I would like her company while I watch over your friend," the doctor said simply.

"Why do you want to talk to me?" I asked when Thibideaux had gone.

"Because there are things you wish to know. You are a gatherer and processor of information, are you not?"

"That's one way of putting it."

"What else is a student? Not a seeker after wisdom, since it takes wisdom to seek it, and you are not wise."

"I know that," I said, irritated."I do not say this to make you unhappy, Viveka, but to enlighten you. For wisdom, you require perspective, and one reason you were brought here was that it appeared to me that perspective was something you had been seeking in your studies."

"Get real," I snapped. "You sound like you gave me a scholarship to graduate school instead of had me force-marched at gunpoint to a prison camp."

She clucked to herself. "You come from such a literal society. The result of all that supposedly Christian doctrine, you know. No argument allowed. Everything is subject to one interpretation only.

Everything must be what it seems ... It is not, you know. Has it never occurred to you that what seems to be a terrible experience may be an opportunity in disguise?"

" 'A st.i.tch in time saves nine,' " I said. " 'Every cloud has a silver lining.' 'You can't tell a book by its cover.' Garbage in, garbage out. Spare me the plat.i.tudes, please. I'd think I'd rather go back to solitary than listen to that from you." Panic rose in me as I seemed to be unable to stop these words, which definitely proved the old woman's a.s.sumption that I was unwise. She could throw me back into solitary, or worse, but although it was possible I was wrong, I felt as if she was inviting this, was even goading me into displaying the anger I had buried since I first arrived.

"Did it ever occur to you that a plat.i.tude becomes a plat.i.tude because it is often and for many people true?"

"What do you know about truth?" I demanded. "I know how you people distort it, try to get people to tell the lies you want to hear until they believe them themselves. And I'm not saying you won't get to me, but I want you to know right now that I know how you do it and this sane part of me knows that your truth is a lie." I sounded very grand even to me. It was a shame n.o.body was there to record it with the last words of Patrick Henry or one of the president's speeches. But I can't help wondering now if I would have blathered on that way if it had been some s.a.d.i.s.tic male officer, or even Wu, instead of the doctor.

And it was all wasted even at that. My histrionics did not impress her. "My dear young woman, perhaps I was mistaken about you. I a.s.sumed that as a seeker of information, you would at least be open to hearing it before you decided on its truth or untruth. Thus far, Nyima Wu has kept you and your countrymen fairly isolated, so if you already know all about us, I have no idea how that could be unless perhaps Lobsang told you?"

"Don't try to get me to rat on Lobsang," I snarled, part of me aware that I sounded ridiculously like an old Humphrey Bogart film. "He's just been doing his job."

"Of course he is. But you really should ask him. And the others. I'm sure that you and your countrymen have discussed how you came to be here ..."

"Some of us, yeah ..."

"Perhaps you should ask the same of Lobsang and others with whom you come in contact."

"They wouldn't answer, would they?"

"Oh yes, certainly they would. Why, it becomes very tedious being among others who know all about one for a very long time, so that one begins to feel there is nothing to share, that all is known, that there is no self...""I thought selflessness and identifying primarily with the group are what your Asian philosophies are all about."

"Identifying, perhaps, but not dissolving the personal ident.i.ty. I'm sure everyone will be very glad to have you wanting to know about them. There is nothing so prized as a good listener after all. You have my permission, my blessing even, to talk to the others." And then I thought I heard her murmur, "It is time. Perhaps past time."

"What?"

"The snow lions and the yaks, of course. It is later than I had hoped. Because they're coming, you see. I suppose there will be others. Pity Nyima shot the lion, though ..."she said, beginning once more to hum over Merridew.

"What about the lion? Look, if you're so anxious that I ask people about themselves, how about you? Why are you the only one who can come and go? If you're Chinese, why were you in a Tibetan guerrilla camp?"

"I will answer your questions, Viveka. But I prefer you ask others first."

"Even Wu? Shall I ask her to write me a little essay about all of her war criminal activities since she was eight?"

"I believe she started rather younger than eight," the doctor said. "And perhaps you should not ask her-Nyima has a great deal of potential but she is still uncomfortable wielding authority. Perhaps you should ask Lobsang Taring instead. And about himself, of course. And the others. Don't forget Colonel Merridew and Dr. Thibideaux."

"Shall I report back to you?" I asked cautiously. Perhaps she thought I would spy for her. Perhaps that's what this sudden permission involved.

"That is not necessary. I will know how you are progressing."

"Do you know everything, then? Do you know how long we're going to be on short rations?"

Her mouth pursed up in the first old-ladyish gesture I'd seen her make, and whirlpools of trouble stirred in her annoyingly serene eyes. She blinked several times, like Marsh, then shook her head. "No, I do not know that. Long, I am afraid. Very long."

No use gloating over that piece of information-the news was no better for us than it was for her.

Maybe it would be awful. Maybe the guards would resort to cannibalism, as guards had reportedly once done in Siberian prison camps. Yaks would not sustain us indefinitely.

"The child the Colonel saved from the lion wasn't injured?" I asked a little lamely, changing the subject.

"No, she was not."

"I suppose you put her right back to work," I said accusingly, slipping back into my asinine role of "gallantly insubordinate prisoner, risking all to defy authority."

"She chose to, yes. Her mother was standing guard duty. Once Pema recovered from her fright, shewas concerned about your Colonel Merridew and she was most uncommonly intrigued by the carca.s.s of the lion. She was born here, you see. She has seen very few animals. Certainly never a snow lion ..."

The doctor's voice drifted off and she returned to humming over Merridew as if I wasn't there, so I left.

I returned to the cell without encountering a guard. Thibideaux, Marsh, and Danielson did not seem to fill the cell properly. We all kept waiting for Merridew to give us the decisive word. We did our yoga and waited for rice. Marsh and Danielson had picked a few immature green beans.

When the rice came, the guards came with it. It was Two-Gun Tsering, who had once taped my mouth when I was hysterical in solitary, who scowled ceaselessly while I hauled rocks, whose daughter had almost become lion food. With her was her husband, Samdup, who held his weapon firmly while his wife, stony-faced, gave each of us a standard half portion, except for Thibideaux, to whom she gave a full ration.

"What's going on?" he asked. Marsh asked the woman something in Chinese, so quickly I couldn't understand. She made a short answer, her face still stony.

"The kid the lion went for today-that was her kid," Marsh said.

"I knew that. Is the extra rice for Merridew, then?" Thibideaux asked, with exaggerated raising of his brows and wide eyes in the woman's direction as he pointed to the food.

She made what sounded to me like a grunt and Marsh said, "Nope, it's for you. You're taking care of Merridew, Merridew took care of her kid, she's taking care of you."

"d.a.m.n," Thibideaux said, rolling the rice into a ball and taking a bite out of it. "What a system. I love it."

"You could share, y'know," Danielson said.

"Make it last," I told Thibideaux. "The doctor is a little scared we've been abandoned by our suppliers, I think."

"They cannot abandon us," the guard said, in English. "We will be provided for, no matter what."

"It's been two pack trains," Marsh reminded her, gently for a captive to his warder. "And there's been no word from the party searching for the guerrilla camp, has there?"

"They will return. There is no way for us to get 'word' here."

"They could do an airdrop," Thibideaux suggested "No! That would betray the security." Tsering objected so strenuously that the panic in her voice surprised me. Is security as important to her as the possibility of her daughter starving to death? "Another pack train will be sent."

Her eyes darted toward the door and she looked sorry she had softened enough to express grat.i.tude. I changed the subject. We could use all the allies we could get. "Is your little girl okay?" I asked, in my best mother-to-mother voice.

"Yes," she said shortly.

"How old is she?"Her husband said, "It is wiser not to count such things in these times in a place like this. She was born on her native soil, and that is what matters."

"You are native Tibetans, then?" Marsh asked.

"Yes."

"A lot of the guards seem to be. I thought most of the Tibetans were gone and the ones who stayed hated all foreigners-especially the Chinese. So can you tell me why there are so many of you working here?"

"That is easy," the man said. "We have no place else to go. Less than one hundred twenty years ago this land was one rarely seen by foreigners, the people were happy, benevolently ruled by a G.o.d-King."

"Never mind one hundred twenty years ago. Your grandfather, who told you such a story, was merely nostalgic for the days when he was a rich man," the woman said sharply. "Before the wealth was evenly divided among the workers."

"You were a worker, Tsering," the man said just as harshly. "Did wealth ever filter down to you?"

To us he said, "She is younger than me. All of her grandparents, her parents, her kin on all sides, have been killed. The only stories she knows, the only dreams she has, are those the invaders allowed her.

Except for Pema, our daughter ..."

"I know other things," Tsering objected. "But your stories are too fantastic to be true. I suspect the truth is somewhere between the lies you were told and the lies I was told. Certainly not the lies they were told." She was quiet for a moment, biting her lip, and then with great determination said, "But this one thing I think is true. Here within this compound are all of the people any of us will ever see again in our lifetimes. For me, thanks to your friend, I have kept for a time the most family I ever have had. For you foreigners, you have no one. I am sorry for this. Your country has sent you far, to die among strangers. I have not been kind. Many of us have not been kind. We must stay here, but there is no reason not to be kind to each other. My name is Tsering. It is my job to keep you here, for you are prisoners because of the harm your people have done to mine. But-if it is possible, if there is something you need-"

"That's real nice of you," Thibideaux drawled softly. "But it's the Colonel who saved your young'n."

"Yes, Thibideaux, but you have saved many others. We have learned of this-of the villages filled with disease you took medicines to and cared for alone ... of how you were captured, trying to save yet another village-and of the prisoners you have healed here. You have a good heart but we have had to harden ours toward you until now: no longer."

They slipped out quietly and a short time later Thibideaux left to relieve the doctor tending Merridew. I lay down on my cement cot and closed my eyes, but no drowsiness would come, only the closed, hardened young face of Tsering, the flesh set in its sour grieving lines while the mouth tried to smile and the eyes reflected the doubts Merridew's actions had aroused within her about the validity of long-held opinions. I hoped she wouldn't be incautious about whom she let know she was getting soft on us prisoners. She wouldn't be able to help us, or her husband either, if anyone learned of their visit or understood that they had taken Merridew's deed personally. Funny about the husband too. He was the one who had looked pitying when they had taped my mouth while I was in solitary. Not a bad egg, perhaps. She had seemed to enjoy being cruel but perhaps it was just that she knew so well how it was done. He was the more human of the two. For them to come to us that way was a brave thing to do, a risk I wouldn't have taken, but I'm glad they took it. Because I believe she's right. We're going to diehere, among these strangers, most of whom we can't even understand. I will never see Puget Sound, Tacoma, a box of corn flakes, an automobile or anything else familiar again. I've never exactly had the life I wanted NAC-side, but I wasn't a prisoner of war then either, with my fate nonnegotiable in someone else's hands. Although the doctor, Tea, Dolma and even-sometimes-Wu seemed less capricious than some of the bosses, professors, and bill collectors I'd had in the NAC, who were just as in control of me, though in slightly subtler ways.

The other thing that interests me about Tsering's little speech is what she said about Thibideaux's record as a humanitarian. Apparently our military careers are open books to our guards. Do they all crowd around the computer when a new disk comes in with the pack train as people in the Second World War crowded around the radio and people back home used to crowd around their televisions?

Now what in the h.e.l.l can that noise be? I've been lying here writing by b.u.t.ter lamp now that the men are snoring. Just a moment ago there was the funniest sound-I thought it was Danielson, who grinds his teeth and speaks in tongues as well as snores, but this sound was more like a growl, or maybe a whine with a yip at the end of it, answered by more of the same. I've had my own ears c.o.c.ked for a minute or two now and-s.h.i.t! It's an avalanche. A slide of rocks and dirt-part of the ceiling just fell in and something is playing hopscotch on the surface above the cell, scampering and thumping around up there, with more of those weird noises. Doesn't seem to bother the men but I'm going to go rat on whatever it is to Tsering and Samdup and pray to G.o.d I'm not preventing somebody else from escaping by snitching.

THIBIDEAUX AND THE THINGS GOING b.u.mP IN THE NIGHT AS TOLD.

BY VIVEKA VANACHEK, WARRANT OFFICER, PRISONER-ARCHIVIST.

AND GIRL REPORTER.

Thibideaux had left the door to our cell open behind him when he left to resume his vigil over the Colonel, and I groped along the wall and up the steps to the outer door. Tugging it open, I found myself staring down the barrel of a rifle, before the beam of a flashlight blinded me.

"I heard a noise," I said, very quickly. "Over our cell."

"What kind of noise?" Tsering asked cautiously. I think she was wondering if her softness on us was going to cost her immediately.

Her husband held the weapon, however, and he lowered it when I told them what I'd heard.

He disappeared into the darkness and poked around for a while but shortly returned, shaking his head.

I didn't feel like creeping back down into the dark corridor below to the cell to listen all night for the noises, so I told Tsering, "I can't sleep. I want to keep watch over Merridew with Thibideaux. Is that all right?"

Tsering nodded as if that was only proper and escorted me to the infirmary room. For the first time I felt guarded in the sense of protected rather than confined-I was d.a.m.ned glad of her flashlight and herweapon.

Thibideaux sat dozing on the floor, his bird beak-sharp nose and chin pointing straight down, his crossed arms resting on the low cot containing Merridew.

His eyes flew open when I stepped into the room. He rubbed them and stretched his hands toward the ceiling.

"How's the Colonel?" I asked.

"Not all that hot, dollin'. I can't be sure without a scan. May need a transfusion although his blood pressure seems to be stabilizing. He's still out cold and I'm pretty sure the cat's impact screwed up his spine. There's a couple of cervical vertebrae that are crunched together. Between you and me, given the facilities ..."He shrugged. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair matted in tufts from sleeping in odd positions.

"Maybe there's something Tsering and her husband can do ..."

"Look, Viv, I know that was pretty amazing, them bein' so human and all, but I wouldn't count on them. They could even be laying a trap for us, you know? You heard the woman's husband say she'd lost the rest of her family. These ain't no indulgent AmCan mamas and daddies buying their kids all the latest technotoys that we're talkin' 'bout here. In this war, the allies and the enemies can be seasoned veterans by the time they're five years old. And a lot more of them are offed for target practice than are saved from animals who ought to be extinct."

"Well, okay, I know I'm the rookie in this outfit, but what kind of a trap would they be laying exactly? They have us in prison already. They have us bought and paid for. Mind you, I've only read books on the subject and have little previous experience but it seems to me that as prison guards who have us at the mercy of their every whim, they have refrained from being too terribly whimsical. They don't need to trap us, Thibideaux. We're already trapped and so are they."

"I don't like it anyway. They don't have to be whimsical- life is f.u.c.king whimsical. You never know what damfool thing people are going to do next. I mean, my daddy's people fished for crawdads and wrestled alligators way back before the alliance and then the corporations poisoned the f.u.c.king swamps, for pity's sake. They did in the oceans and the forests at the same time and there was nowhere to fish, nothing to farm ... You know what my parents did for a living, cher? My mama was a bird cleaner and my papa ran a reclamation racket called Troubled Waters. He was a tanker chaser, following along with skimming rigs, waiting for a spill, promising to restore the area to life for a fee a little smaller than a lawsuit would cost. What he couldn't skim he'd burn or lace with chemicals that were worse then the oil, then he'd salt the place with farm-fish that lived until he was out of the area. They caught up with him, eventually, of course. He was one of the frontline troops in the early Lebanese-Libyan wars. You don't f.u.c.k with the fuel companies. Mama and me and my brothers and sisters-there was one for every time Daddy'd come ash.o.r.e for a while-we traveled the coasts, wherever there was a spill, cleanin' up the birds. Mama's money all went to the government, with whatever Papa left, in fines and taxes. The only way we ate was, she didn't tell them nothing about some of my brothers and sisters and they kept the two bucks a bird they made for cleanin'."

"Seems like a pretty big jump from bird cleaning to medicine," I said.

"Nah, not really. To be a good bird cleaner you got to have the healin' hands too-calm 'em, like, while you handle 'em. And you develop technique. Then too, my mama and my sisters were alwayshavin' babies and I learned to help with that. Bird cleaners can't afford real doctorin' so whatever camp we were in, there was always somebody needing me. Then when there weren't hardly any birds to clean up anymore and the price per bird got so high folks started sending their kids to school to get degrees to do it, the police started sayin' you couldn't move from one place to another and then finally they came in and cleaned up the bird cleaners, sent all of us into the wars. Mama, she did fine, took to the air force like a duck to water, you might say, cleanin' up mechanical birds like once she cleaned live ones. We never really heard from most of my brothers and sisters anymore-my sisters Marie and Claire, they're not far, somewhere around Afghanistan, last I heard. And I have a brother name of Gull got it in Morocco. The rest don't write so good and may be dead by now. Me, on account of I liked to heal things, I said I'd be a medic. But truth was, cher, I knew about your whimsicalness way before I got into the soldierin' business just from dodgin' your fuel companies and governments and such."

"I guess I know what you mean," I said. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor with my back against the wall, getting a crick in my neck from looking up at him.

"'Course, sometimes war brings out even more whimsicalness in your fellow man than average, I'll grant you. When I first got to Asia, I landed with an a.s.sault force on the beach at Rangoon. Thai guerrillas had us pinned down with heavy fire and I was layin' there with my nose in the dirt tryin' to be invisible when someone hollers 'Medic'-so I'm a medic so up I go runnin' toward this supposedly injured man and suddenly all the lead in the world is flyin' my way but I make it to where I hear the cries and I see that he's already wriggled out of range, back down the beach, because he got me to draw his fire. I guess after all them years of cleanin' oily birds, I musta looked to them like a sittin' duck, but after a couple three times, I learned. The injured were dead men, as far as their buddies were concerned, and medics were good diversionary targets."

"So didn't that make you want to stop trying to help people?"

"No, cher. Because what else could I do? I've got these healin' hands. The worst part of this prison thing is that I don't use 'em too often, and then I get kind of mean, like. No, what it made me do was say, f.u.c.k your patches and your 'This is our ally and this is our enemy.' I just worked on anybody I came across needed it."

"That must have gone over big," I said.

"Well, I'll tell you somethin' n.o.body else except Marsh knows, and he can keep his mouth closed tighter than a Republican senator's purse strings when he's votin' on a welfare bill."

"A what?" I asked and then remembered hearing the grandparents mentioning welfare-government relief programs, they said. Come to think of it, the professor with the theory about how NACAF was formed said the present military system made welfare obsolete. Thibideaux grunted with irritation at being interrupted and I said, "Sorry. Go on."

The floor was cold under my rear and the room so dim from the one low-watt bulb granted the infirmary that I had to strain to make out Thibideaux's sharp features.

"I wasn't exactly in the army anymore when Marsh and me were caught. I was giving myself a little early discharge and fixin' to take care of the flood victims then make it over to Mandalay. I met this lady there ... but well, I was still in uniform when we got captured so it didn't seem worth mentioning."

"Especially since if you'd been taken when you were out of uniform you'd have been shot as a spy?" I asked."There is that," he admitted. Then he added, "My turn was comin' up anyway when the old lady showed up. There were ten of us, counting Marsh, goin' into that village. The other seven, they bought it real quick."