bristle, in return.
'That may be true,' Scott answered, 'but at least when I hear that firing squad commander give the order, I'll know that no one ever stole from me that which is more important than my life.'
'Which would be?'
'Dignity.'
'Does a helluva lot of good for you when you're dead.'
'That's where you're wrong, Hart. Completely wrong.
Which is the difference between you and me. I want to live just as much as you, or any other man here. But I'm not willing to be someone different in order to survive. Because that would be a far greater lie than those being spoken from this witness stand. Or any other location.'
Tommy paused, considering what Scott had said. Finally, he shook his head.
'You are a difficult man to understand, Scott. Very difficult.'
Scott smiled enigmatically.
'You presume I want to be understood.'
'All right. Point well taken. But, it seems to me that you are only willing to fight these accusations on your own terms.'
'That is the way that I know.'
'Well, listen to me when I tell you that we're going to have to do something different, because we're not going to win as it stands now.'
'I understand that,' Lincoln Scott said, sadly.
'But what you fail to understand is that there are different sorts of victories.
Winning in this phony kangaroo court may not be as important as refusing to change who I am!'
Tommy was taken aback by this statement, and not quick to respond. But the sudden silence between the two men was filled by Hugh Renaday. He had been standing, shoulder to the wall, watching and listening throughout all the angry words shared between the two men, remaining silent. But now he finally stepped forward, shaking his head.
'You're a pair of damn fools,' he said sharply.
'And both blind as bats.'
The two men turned toward the Canadian, who was grinning almost maniacally, as he spoke.
'Neither of the two of you fools can see the big picture, here. Can you now?'
Scott lightened up, just a small amount, in that second.
'But you're going to tell us, right?'
'I am, indeed,' Hugh snorted.
'Where's Phillip Pryce when one truly needs him? You know. Tommy, if he is dead and looking down at you from up above somewhere, the old limey bastard is probably choking on your words.'
'Maybe so, Hugh. Enlighten me.'
Hugh stomped about for a moment, then lit a cigarette.
'You, Lincoln, you want to undo the world! You want change, as long as it isn't you that changes. And you. Tommy, you're so mesmerized by playing by the rules that you can't see how unfair they are! Ah, you're both crazy, and neither of you is acting with any bloody sanity whatsoever.'
He pointed at Lincoln Scott.
'You made yourself into a perfect man to accuse, didn't you? I mean, someone in this damn camp wanted to kill Trader Vic, and went out and did it, and then you couldn't have made yourself any damn more convenient for him to shift the blame right onto your bloody ass! True enough?'
Scott nodded.
'That's not the most elegant way of putting things. But true enough.
Seems that way.'
'And, I dare say, you couldn't make it any damn easier for Townsend to convict you, either.'
Scott nodded.
'But…' he started.
Hugh shook his head.
'Ah, don't speak to me of buts and maybes and hopefullys and all that crap! There is only one solution to this situation, and that is winning, because when all is said and done, that's the only thing that matters! Not how you win, or why you win, or even when you win. But win you must, and the sooner you see that, the better off we shall all be!'
Scott stopped. Then nodded.
'Perhaps,' he said.
'Bloody right! You think about that! You've been so damn busy proving that you're better than anyone else here, you've forgotten to see how you're exactly the damn same! And you, Tommy, you haven't done what you said we'd do, which is to fight back! Use their own damnable lies against them!'
Hugh coughed hard.
'Didn't Phillip teach you a bloody thing?' He looked down at the end of his smoke, then pinched off the burning ember, stomping on it as it tumbled to the floor, and then stuffing the half-smoked butt into his blouse breast pocket.
'I'm hungry,' he said, 'And I think it's damn time we ate, though why I'm sitting about with the two of you posturing fools is beyond me. You both want to win, and you want to win in the goddamn right way, or else it's somehow not right? This is a bloody war! People are dying every second of the day and night! It's not a boxing match with Marquis of Queensberry rules! Go to war, damn it, the two of you! Stop playing fair! And until the two of you put your heads together and agree to do that, well, a pox on both of you.'
'A plague,' Scott said, smiling.
'All right, then,' Hugh snorted.
'A plague, if you prefer.'
'That's what Mercutio says, as he dies,' Scott continued.
'A plague on both your houses!' Capulets and Montagues.'
'Well, bloody Mercutio and bloody Shakespeare got it bloody right!'
Hugh went over to his bunk and reached beneath it, removing a Red Cross parcel with foodstuffs.
'Damn it,' he said, as if the parcel and its limited contents were somehow surprising.
'All I have left is one of those damn awful British Red Cross parcels.
Weak tea and tasteless kippers and crap! Tommy, I hope you've got something better. From the States. Land of Plenty and Abundance.'
Tommy thought for a moment, then asked, 'Hugh, what was the German ration for tonight?'
Hugh looked up, snorting hard.
'The usual. Kriegsbrot and some of that damn awful blood sausage.
Phillip used to take it and bury it in the garden, even when we were starving.
Couldn't bring himself to eat it. Neither can I. Neither can anyone I know, in either compound. How the Krauts manage to swallow it is beyond me, as well.'
Blood sausage, Tommy thought suddenly. It was a staple of the German issue to the kriegies, and just as routinely refused even when they were starving. The sausage was disgusting stuff, thick tubes of what the prisoners thought was congealed offal liberally mixed with slaughterhouse blood, given a hard enough consistency by mixing it with sawdust. No matter how it was cooked, it still tasted like eating waste matter. Many of the men buried it, as Pryce had done, in the hope that it might serve as fertilizer. The theater troops in both British and American compounds occasionally mashed it up and used it as a prop in some play's scene that called for blood.
He turned suddenly to Scott.
