'So the bulbs go off in Ronnie's head until he's strung out like the Brooklyn Bridge on a clear night: "Sure," he says, "why didn't I think of it before? That's the ticket: malaria.'"

'Did Ross have malaria himself?' Antar asked.

'He got it about halfvay into his work,' said Murugan.

He directed a sharply appraising glance at Antar. 'Why'd you ask? Have you ever had it yourself?'

Antar nodded. 'Yes,' he said, 'a long time ago, in Egypt.'

Murugan sat up. 'That's funny,' he said. 'The malaria rates are pretty low in Egypt.'

'I suppose I was an exception,' said Antar.

'So was yours a freak case? Or was there a localized outbreak?'

'I don't know,' said Antar shortly.

'Do you ever get relapses?' Murugan persisted.

'Sometimes,' Antar said.

'That's how it goes,' Murugan said with a wry smile. 'You think it's gone for ever and suddenly, it's hey, long time no see.'

'So you get them too!' Antar said, raising his eyebrows.

'Do I ever!' Murugan laughed. 'But you know, I don't worry about it too much. I guess it's because malaria isn't just a disease. Sometimes it's also a cure.'

'A cure?' Antar said. 'For what?'

'Ever heard of Julius Wagner-Jauregg?'

'No.'

'He won the Nobel too; for stuff he did with malaria. He was even born the same year as Ronnie Ross, but in Austria. He was a psychologist: had a couple of serious run-ins with Freud. But the reason his name is up there in the bright lights is that he discovered something about malaria that Ross couldn't even have begun to guess at.'

'What?' said Antar.

'He discovered that artificially induced malaria could cure syphilis – at least in the dementia paralytica stage when it attacks the brain.'

'It sounds incredible,' said Antar.

'Sure,' said Murugan. 'But it still got him the Nobel in 1927. Artificially induced malaria was the standard treatment for syphilitic paresis until the forties. Fact is, malaria does stuff to the brain that we're still just guessing at.'

'But to come back to Ross,' said Antar. 'You say he didn't catch malaria until he was well into his work? So what got him interested in it, then?'

'It was the Zeitgeist,' said Murugan. 'Malaria was the cold fusion of his day; the Sunday papers were scrambling to get it on their covers. And it figures: malaria's probably the all time biggest killer among diseases. Next to the common cold it's just about the most prevalent disease on the planet. We're not talking about a disease which shoots off the charts suddenly some century like the plague or smallpox or syphilis. Malaria's been around since the big bang or thereabouts, pegged at about the same level all along. There's no place on earth that's off the malaria map: Arctic circle, freezing mountaintop, burning desert, you name it, malaria's been there. We're not talking millions of cases here; more like hundreds of millions. We don't even know how many, because malaria's so widespread it doesn't always get on the charts. And besides, it's a master of disguise: it can mimic the symptoms of more diseases than you can begin to count – lumbago, the 'flu, cerebral haemorrhage, yellow fever. And even when it's properly diagnosed it's not like quinine is always going to get you home safe. With certain kinds of malaria you can mainline quinine all the livelong day and come nightfall you'll still be gathering freezer-burn in the mortuary. It's only fatal in a fraction of all reported cases but when you're dealing with hundreds of millions, a fraction adds up to the population of an economy-size country.'

'So when Ross began,' Antar said, 'was there a new interest in malaria?'

'You bet,' said Murugan. 'The mid-nineteenth century was when the scientific community began to wake up to malaria. Remember this was the century when old Mother Europe was settling all the Last Unknowns: Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas, even uncolonized parts of herself. Forests, deserts, oceans, warlike natives – that stuff's easy to deal with when you've got dynamite and the Gatling gun; chicken-feed compared to malaria. Don't forget it wasn't that long ago when pretty much every settler along the Mississippi had to take time off every other day for an attack of the shakes. It was just as bad in the swamps around Rome; or in Algeria, where French settlers were making a big push. And this was just about the time that new sciences like bacteriology and parasitology were beginning to make a splash in Europe. Malaria went right to the top of the research agenda. Governments began to pour money into malaria research – in France, in Italy, in the US, everywhere except England. But did Ronnie let that stop him? No, sir, he just stripped off and jumped right in.'

Antar frowned: 'You mean Ross didn't have any official support from the British government?'

'No, sir: the Empire did everything it could to get in his way. Besides, when it came to malaria the British were non-starters: the front-line work was being done in France and the French colonies, Germany, Italy, Russia, America – anywhere but where the Brits were. But you think Ross cared? You've got to hand it to the guy, he had balls, that motherfucker. There he is: he's at an age when most scientists start checking their pension funds; he knows sweet fuck all about malaria (or anything else); he's sitting out in the boonies somewhere where they never even heard of a lab; he hasn't set hands on a microscope since he left medical school; he's got a job in this dinky little outfit, the Indian Medical Service, which gets a couple of copies of Lancet and nothing else, not even the Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine, forget about the Johns Hopkins Bulletin or the Annales of the Pasteur Institute. But our Ronnie doesn't give a shit: he gets out of bed one sunny day in Secunderabad or wherever and says to himself, in his funny little English accent, "Dear me, I don't know what I'm going to do with myself today, think I'll go and solve the scientific puzzle of the century, kill a few hours." Never mind all the heavy hitters who're out there in the ballpark. Forget about Laveran, forget about Robert Koch, the German, who's just blown into town after doing a number on typhoid; forget about the Russian duo, Danilewsky and Romanowsky, who've been waltzing with this bug' since when young Ronald was shitting himself in his crib; forget about the Italians who've got a whole goddam pasta factory working on malaria; forget about W. G. MacCallum out in Baltimore, who's skating on the edge of a real breakthrough in hematozoan infections in birds; forget about Bignami, Celli, Golgi, Marchiafava, Kennan, Nott, Canalis, Beauperthuy; forget about the Italian government, the French government, the US government who've all got a shitload of money out there chasing malaria; forget them all. They don't even see Ronnie coming until he's set to stop the clocks.'

'Just like that?' said Antar.

'That's right. At least that's how it began. And you know what? He did it; he beat the Laverans and the Kochs and the Grassis and the whole Italian mob; he beat the governments of the US and France and Germany and Russia; he beat them all. Or that's the official story anyway: young Ronnie, the lone genius, streaks across the field and runs away with the World Cup.'

'I take it you don't go along with this,' said Antar.

'You said it, Ant. This is one story I just don't buy.'

'Why not?'

A waiter appeared at their table and placed bowls of soup in front of them. Rubbing the palms of his hands together, Murugan lowered his head into the lemonscented cloud that was rising from his soup bowl.

'I take it,' Antar persisted, 'that you have your own version of how Ronald Ross made his discoveries?'

'That's certainly one way of putting it,' said Murugan.