that Broussard had emerged from. "Do you mind?"
Broussard graciously acknowledged the dismissal. "Not at all. See you later."
He ran into Bautista a few minutes later. "You know about Roger doing any testing with birds?"
"No." Bautista's eyes were glassy and red. He was plastered. "Do you?" He then proceeded to giggle all over himself.
Broussard abruptly turned around and headed to an empty spot on the beach to watch the swells. He stayed there by himself until it was time to leave.
Four days passed and the conversation on the officers' ward had dramatically fallen since its peak during lunchtime. At that time, the DAT team and the entire medical staff had all been on the floor at once. That had not been planned. Someone at the front desk had made a mistake in scheduling, causing the scientists and engineers to arrive four hours earlier than planned. It would have been too much of an inconvenience for all of them to return to the hotel, and so they had been invited to stay. Most of their time had been spent staying out of the way of the extra doctors and nurses on duty that day. There was a higher level of attention being paid to Jack and General Hughes, and rightly so. The men had definitely taken a turn for the worse, but they were both still awake, alert, and full of gab.
By the time the night shift nurses had clocked in, the ward was almost empty and ghostly quiet. Most of the patients were either asleep or watching television from fixed positions. Only the general remained awake.
The DAT team had dwindled down to just four: Chang, Broussard, Walters, and Kuiper. Two of the Army Rangers had been posted outside to guard the entrance. The group had missed their window of opportunity to work with the men in private, and so Chang selected a skeleton crew for the evening and dismissed the rest. The nurses brought in heavy-duty cots and small tables for them to use. Dinner was brought in along with Pastor Walsh, who, as was his custom, sped through the pleasantries and then got down to business.
Shortly after he arrived, the AIs were again brought in via their animal crates. Only eleven regular hospital employees had a high enough security clearance to actually know about their existence: the airport guide, six nurses, and four doctors. The rest were told that special therapy dogs were assisting in the treatment of the wounded officers. So far it had worked. These medical professionals now worked side by side with the DAT team in tending to their patients and making sure that the DATs were secure and comfortable.
It was now almost ten o'clock at night. The pastor was on a short break. Kuiper and Broussard had been asleep for over an hour. Amadeus, David, and Sarah, having exhausted all potentially interesting phenomena on the ward hours ago, had placed themselves in processing mode. Walters and Chang lounged in cots next to each other, picking at a bowl of raw peanuts that one of the nurses had brought in. Walters whispered, "I'm starting to feel like a ghoul waiting around for one of them to croak."
Chang's eyelids began to flutter. "I don't like it either." Bruce, who had insisted on sharing the cot with him, said, "I don't like it either."
Chang was now asleep and snoring so only Walters saw him say this. "Bruce, do you know what you're talking about?"
The AI looked at him. "Yes."
"What then?"
Chang's free arm flopped up and over onto Bruce.
"I don't know."
Walters chuckled. "That's what I thought." He gave him a mock sock to the head. "Stay out of adults' conversation, boy."
"I am not a boy."
"Oh? What are you then?"
"I'm a he-DAT."
"A what-DAT?"
"I'm a he-DAT."
Walters became suspicious. "Who told you that?"
"Pastor Walsh."
Walter's anger flared but he did not let it show. "I see." He put his head close to Bruce's. "Nobody but your family tells you who you are. Nobody. Do you understand this, Bruce?"
Pastor Walsh returned from break and strolled over, carrying a leather-bound Bible in one hand. "Hello. Van, isn't it?"
"Speak of the devil," Walters mumbled beneath his breath. "Yes. Hello." He sat up.
The pastor was wearing his semi-concerned look. "Say, I noticed that Rose and Sarah were limping a little this afternoon. Is everything all right?
"Yes. We took them to the beach the other day, and they got sand inside their legs."
Now the pastor looked fully concerned. "Hmm, that doesn't sound good."
"It isn't great, but don't worry. We're getting it cleaned out. Slowly."
The pastor smiled. "They've been telling me about their trip to the beach. I must tell you, if I had my eyes shut tight, I would think that I was having a discussion with two human children."
Walters just smiled.
The tall man continued. "The Most High has surely blessed the work of your hands. You and your colleagues have done something extraordinary. Simply amazing." He took a comfortable chair next to Ivy Hughes's bed. Before he could settle in, one of the Rangers was standing before him. "There's a young man outside who says that he needs to talk with you. He seems pretty upset."
The pastor exhaled and let his eyelids droop.
"Sir, would you like me to ask him to come back later?"
"No." The pastor stood. "I'll speak with him." The two men briefly left the room. Bruce left the still sleeping Chang and climbed into bed with Ivy Hughes. The general smiled and scratched the AI behind the ears. "You're really just a big old housecat, aren't you?"
"I am a he-DAT. But Uncle Van is mad about it."
Hughes smiled down at him. "A really, really smart housecat."
A minute later Rose joined them on the bed, and it began to creak beneath their combined weight.
Broussard, who had been napping nearby, woke up. "Are they bothering you, sir?" he asked groggily.
"No, no, no. We're fine," Hughes said.
Pastor Walsh soon returned and reclaimed his chair.
Hughes looked him over. "Reverend, you're looking a little threadbare. Why don't you loosen your tie and put your feet up?"
"General, that is something that my mother taught me to never do in public. However, I believe that if she knew how truly tired I was now, she would let me do it this once. And so I will."
The pastor carefully placed his Bible on his lap. Then he removed his jacket and tie. Walters got up and placed one of the tables beneath his feet.
"You comfy?" the general asked.
The pastor leaned back, closed his eyes, and smiled. "I am."
The general let the man collect his thoughts for a few minutes before speaking to him again. "Were you able to help that young man?"
Pastor Walsh raised his head. "I hope that I was able to supply him with some comfort." His eyes moved about. "Like so many people now, they're experiencing a lot of regret. Thinking that maybe if they'd lived their lives a different way, things wouldn't be so hard. I told him, like I tell everyone, stop worrying about the mistakes you made yesterday. Yesterday is gone forever. You just worry about not making those mistakes today."
The general nodded. "I have regrets. I caught a twenty-pound catfish once and threw it back. My wife didn't want me to kill it."
Pastor Walsh chuckled, recognizing the magnitude of the general's sacrifice for his wife's peace of mind.
Hughes continued talking. "I graduated from West Point in nineteen-seventy. My first commission was as an infantry officer—stateside—but my pop had different ideas. You see, he was a military man, too. Served in World War II with honors. Well, he told me that a man could not truly lead other men in peace or in battle until he understood who they were and knew the dangers that they would be facing. So he pulled some strings and had me kicked down to medic and shipped off to Vietnam. I was so scared I peed myself twice on the plane."
He paused. Bruce's comm panel was lit. "You were afraid?"
"Yes, Bruce, I was very afraid. Do you know about being afraid?"
"I don't know," he answered.
Pastor Walsh stepped into the conversation. "I believe that they are taught
to preserve themselves."
The general nodded. "Self-preservation is good. Fear helps a body do that."
The soldier suddenly spasmed as his lungs attempted to cough up phlegm and stiff blood. Everyone remained still as his body worked through the procedure. In a minute or so he was done, and he settled back down into his pillows.
"Anyway, it was rough going from day one. If my unit wasn't taking hits from the VC, then we were fighting the heat, the flies, and the dysentery. A couple of months into my tour things got really nasty. I don't know what you've heard about the Vietnam War, but take the worst and multiply it by a hundred."
Hughes coughed up some phlegm and spat it into a paper cup. "The politics aside, the Cong were brutal. They fought a guerilla campaign against us because they couldn't fight us toe-to-toe." He spat some more. "They'd take pieces of bamboo, sharpen the tips, and cover them with dung. Then they'd plant them in the ground in tall grass, points up. We were working on maybe ten men a day who'd been wounded with these hellish things, and most of that was just keeping them from screaming too loud before they died. Then they secured a line of credit from Russia and they became more creative. It got worse. Day after day of ripped and torn guys, some of them I knew. Early one morning before dawn we got a squawk from some of our guys who had just been ambushed about seven klicks from camp. Cappy ordered us out of bed and told us to go get them. He might as well have just said, 'I want you to go out there and get killed with them,' 'cause that's what it amounted to. I remember putting on my boots and helmet. I just needed my bag and I kept thinking, 'I