The stench and stains of battle still on his clothing, Janson stood before Demarest, who sat pensively at his desk. A medieval plainsong—an eerily simple and slow progression of notes—emerged from small speakers.

Finally, Demarest looked up at him. “Do you know what just happened out there?”

“Sir?”

“If it doesn’t mean anything, it happened for no reason. That’s not a universe you want to live in. You’ve got to make it mean something.”

“As I told you before, it was like they knew we were coming, sir.”

“Seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?”

“You didn’t—don’t—seem surprised, sir.”

“Surprised? No. That was my null hypothesis—the prediction that I was testing. But I had to know for sure. Noc Lo was, among other things, an experiment. If one were to file plans for an incursion with the local ARVN liaison to Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, what consequences could one expect? What are the information relays that lead back to the local insurgency ? There’s only one way to test these things. And now we’ve learned something. We have an enemy that is committed to our root-and-branch destruction—committed with all its heart and soul and mind. And on our side? A lot of transplanted bureaucrats who think they’re working for the Tennessee Valley Authority or some damn thing. A few hours ago, son, you narrowly escaped with your life. Was Noc Lo a defeat, or a victory? It’s not so easy to say, is it?”

“Sir, it did not taste like victory. Sir.”

“Hardaway died, I said, because he was weak. You lived, as I knew you would, because you were strong. Strong like your dad—second wave of the landing on Red Beach, if I’m not mistaken. Strong like your uncle, in the forests and ravines of Sumava, picking off Wehrmacht officers with an old hunting rifle. There’s nobody fiercer than those Eastern European partisans—I had an uncle like that myself. War shows us who we are, Paul. My hope is that today you learned something about yourself. Something I determined about you back in Little Creek.”

Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest reached for a dog-eared paperback he had on his desk. “You know your Emerson?” He began to read from it: “‘A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushions of advantages he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit.’ I reckon Ralph Waldo was on to something.”

“Be nice to think so, sir.”