was silence, the motor turning over and ticking in the quiet.
Automatically, Winch turned off the ignition. Then just sat in the stillness for a while. It was the first time any of his nightmares had actually impinged upon his outside physical world and affected it. That would bear some thinking about.
As he sat, he realized slowly that there was nobody at all around, anywhere.
Fortunately, he was able to back out. The metal damage was negligible, mostly a bent headlight, fender and bumper. He could still drive it. Luxor was still five miles off.
Nothing happened the rest of the way. As if satisfied, the figure of Jacklin did not return.
At the apartment, which was the upstairs of a private home downtown not too far from the Peabody, he parked the damaged car and hurried up the outside stairs in the rain to the upper floor.
Inside, Carol put down the book she was reading and stood up. All the lights were on, the way he liked it. She was fully clothed. She hated to undress herself or lie around half-nude, and always waited for him to come and do it. She looked very young. Incredibly young. She held out her arms for him to come and begin undressing her. Winch did so.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” she said when she saw his face.
Winch did not answer and buried his face in her young, un-wounded, hungry shoulder.
“Oh, whatever is going to become of us?” she said, in her emotional child’s voice.
“Nothing,” Winch said. “Hush. For God’s sake, just don’t talk.”
CHAPTER 23
THE SUMMONS TO REPORT to Col Stevens in his office came when Landers had been on ward arrest for over a week.
Landers had no way of knowing Winch had gotten involved in his case. And if he had known, he would not have been elated. Landers had decided lately he no longer liked Winch so much. He wanted no help from Winch. He did not know Winch had called Strange about him that same morning, on Strange’s ward, and that in fact Strange was supposed to get him a message about the developments. So he went up to the lion’s den with a daredevil’s, I’ve-got-nothing-to-lose attitude that was not really in keeping with all that had transpired.
Strange would kick himself in the tail, later in the day, for not having gotten to him before he went. But then later still, Strange wondered whether it could have helped.
Being on ward arrest was not actually all that bad. Even Landers had to admit that. There were no chains or handcuffs to wear. The ward door was not locked. It was more like some sort of school honor system. But if you stepped outside the door, or went off walking away somewhere, you immediately became officially a fugitive. In practice, it did not work out that way and Landers was often outside the door, talking to somebody or other, and when he was sent to his medical appointments outside in the hospital he went alone, not under guard. If he stopped off a few minutes to see somebody, nobody checked up on him. He was required to eat all his meals on the ward, and not allowed to go and stand in the long line at the big messhall, but this was a gain, a great boon, as far as he was concerned. He had total freedom of the ward itself. And he was allowed to have visitors.
On the other hand, he was not for some reason allowed to make or receive phone calls. He had never made or taken phone calls on the ward, nor wanted to. So the restriction didn’t hurt him. But it irritated him because of its unreasonable, Army nonsensicality.
Another thing that irritated Landers was that his uniforms were locked up, in the lockup closet with the uniforms of the medically restricted patients. If he did walk off the ward without permission, where the hell was he going to go? In pajamas and bathrobe and slippers?
But mainly it was that he had no more all-day, all-night passes which got to Landers the most. He had grown accustomed to getting fucked every night, at least once. And the absence of human females afflicted him sorely. He had become used to these exceptional, wounded-patient hospital passes, they seemed one of his natural rights. Now it struck him, forcibly, that when he did go back to duty with the ordinary, everyday Army, even on limited duty, he would no longer have them.
He did not like the