Lett sat up straight, refocused, made himself look shipshape. Hell, he even smiled.

“It’s been too long, Doc,” he said.

“Indeed it has.” Lansdale wasn’t wearing a white doctor’s coat of course, just khakis as always but without the holster. He tossed the wet stub of his cigar in the trash can. “How you faring, hero?”

“Fine. Say, could I pop out a minute?”

“No. You have a briefing coming. There’s the latrine.” Lansdale wagged a thumb at the door to the toilet, the only other room attached to the briefing hut.

“No, it’s . . .” His leg started bouncing, he leaned on it. “I need my dose,” he blurted.

Lansdale stared a moment. “You know what I think? I think it’s finally time you go without. I mean, you’ve been performing so well—you’re further along than you think. You’re well into the third stage.”

“I don’t know . . . not unless, maybe you got something else to replace it?”

Lansdale held up a finger, and his giant class ring flashed. “See now. Such a thing is exactly what I do have.” He spun on his long feet and picked up a piece of chalk from the empty chalkboard on the bare plywood wall.

Lansdale, his hands dusted pale with chalk and his face streaked with it like some cuckoo witch doctor, lectured Lett on the marching legions of Communists taking over Eastern Europe, now poised to overrun Asia and the Pacific and soon America itself. They had to be faced. They must be stopped. Defeating Hitler was only the first step. Millions might be enslaved. Standing up to Joe Stalin and his Chinese henchman Mao Tse-tung was the true end goal. Bold deeds were required, but steely men like Lett were the very men for the great task at hand! The lecture reminded Lett of those films they were shown in boot camp, Why We Fight, but this was more cheerful, oddly, accompanied by positive yet hollow slogans that Lansdale kept writing on the board and erasing.

To succeed, we must first believe that we can!

Nothing tames the old worries quicker than pure action!

And on and on it went, for an hour, for the rest of the afternoon.

It submerged Lett in a grinding, thrashing blur of panic. He tried to keep it together, but his cruel old monkey was creeping back on top of him, clawing at his temples and the top of his skull.

Lansdale finished scribbling another silly homily, turned around to Lett, and started. “What is it? You’re sweating something awful.”

Lett unbolted a smile like a hatch falling open. He couldn’t appear too weakened, not now. Maybe the point of this was to see if he could forgo his dose? “I’m trying, I really am,” he said.

Lansdale, eyes narrowing, turned to the board and drew more figures on the matte blackness, the chalk tapping, dragging, screaking.