He never learned that the fault was in himself, that he approached the relationships as a spider approaches a fly. He sucked their substance and gave very little in return. Just material things, or the few little privileges within his power to grant.
That he was a chronic whiner, and absolutely refused to risk any self-responsibility or initiative, didn't help. People got tired of listening to him.
"Christ, that felt good," said Snake, clomping from the shower. "Have to wear anything special to this cafeteria? I'm ready for coffee and a smoke. Going to grab all I can before they bring on the thumbscrews."
"No special uniform. We only have one, a working uniform. And it isn't that way at all."
Snake gave him his most cynical look. "Who are you trying to snow?"
Michael shuffled nervously, embarrassedly. Some students did have it bad. But they made it tough on themselves.
Cash hadn't always been a sorry nebbish, nor would he always be one. Not to his present neurotic extent.
The long march to prison camp, entirely at the mercy of brutal captors, dodging the bombs, shells, and ambushes of his own side, while suffering dysentary and the ravages of tropical diseases, had shaped him more than any five years of prior life.
Snake it had only made more the way he was.
Of the twenty-three prisoners who had begun the trek, only Michael, Snake, and three others had survived.
In his way, Cash was tougher than most men. But he couldn't suffer in silence, nor could he take an uncompromising stand.
For six months he had devoted his whole being to survival. And he had managed. At the cost of having had his personality hammered to a shape suited to no more noble purpose.
Evangelic espousal of the Maoist faith was another reason friends didn't last. Americans tend to isolate and shun zealots.
Michael, initially, was as abrasive as a brand new Jehovah's Witness, by damned going to bring salvation to the unbeliever even if he had to manage it at bayonet point. Later he learned to pursue more subtle paths to conversion.
His evangelism suited the director. New students needed a focus for their hatred. Diffuse, undirected emotion remained hard to tap, to channel, to control.
Snake said little till they had filled their meal trays and had seated themselves. He sipped coffee, smoked half a Marlboro, stared at his tray. "Makes you light-headed after doing without for so long. And more food than we used to get in two days."
"They take good care of us here. You can go back for more if you want."
"Why?"
"Try those pancakes. Like Mom used to make."
Michael had just begun to appreciate the investment that had gone into this place. Where, in Red China, did you find a cook able to whip up a midwestern breakfast and make it taste Iowa on a frosty autumn morning? Where did you get ham, bacon, eggs, sausage, grits, biscuits, gravy, cornbread, cereal, to prepare to each man's taste? Twenty-four brands of cigarettes. Coke, Pepsi, and Seven-Up. Bud, Busch, Burgie, Coors, Hamm's, Miller's, Pabst, Schlitz, and a dozen others, in a beer cooler that was open two hours every evening…
All the comforts of home. But no Playboy in the library. No newspapers or periodicals from home, except the like of the Daily Worker, and especially selected excerpts from editorial columns.
Snake didn't press. He downed half his meal before noting, "I thought there'd be more people around. They kept taking guys out of every camp I was ever in."
Only two Americans not of the new class were around. Like Michael, they were graduates.
"This is just the orientation center. Only gets used when there's a new class. The main installation is huge. And getting bigger every day." Chinese lifetermers, condemned to see the sun nevermore, provided the labor digging the academy ever deeper and larger. "We have six national divisions, all separate, all broken up into as many independent sections as are necessary. The American division is the biggest right now, but the Russian and Burmese are pretty big too." He frowned, wondering why that should be. Nobody knew what the hell was going on outside. The isolation kept you from finding out from anybody who had been there recently. Guys from the camps only knew what had happened before their capture.
It was like living on the moon, trying to follow current events through a telescope.
He shouldn't be telling Snake anything. It wasn't his job. "Most of our graduates go back to special camps."
That hadn't always been the plan. But the threat of commando raids aimed at rescuing POWs had made the director decide that someone should be available for recapture.
Then, too, he was unsure of the extent and efficacy of the CIA networks in the North. He feared a constant, unexplained depletion of prisoner populations would alert the enemy. As it was, the operation limped, crippled by balky, obstinate Vietnamese officials. The middle echelons, it seemed, cooperated as little as possible.
Security was the reason, of course. Only Ho and General Giap had ever been in the know.
Graduates were kept quarantined, doing post-graduate work, being brought ever more into line. The hypnotic treatments, needed to make the majority ignorant of what they were, was delicate, took ages to perfect, and occasionally needed reinforcement.
Michael spent another hour introducing Snake to his new world.
"Mike, I've had it," Cantrell finally protested. "I've got to sleep."
Cash harkened back to his own long, harrowing plane ride. "Sure. I understand. Go ahead. I'll see you in the morning."
Michael retreated to his own room, a bedroom-office off the dormitory. He lay on his bunk a long time, staring at the concrete ceiling.
Snake was still Snake. He was still Michael Cash. But Time had been nurturing one of its infamous treasons. The old bond, wrought between men who had helped one another survive a prisonward hell march, had worn.
He hadn't been there to share and ease the pain when Snake had taken the injuries to his leg and soul. Snake hadn't been here. They just hadn't shared in too long.
A single tear dribbled from Michael's right eye. He brushed it away irritably. Then he moved to his desk, to lose himself in his language studies.
Little of his graduate work was Marxist. The director wanted his special men to have skills making them suitable for the widest possible employment. Michael was pursuing a curriculum ranging from hard science to the softest liberal arts. It was more intense than any he had known in college. And he had his duties as well.