"Your connections don't help?" said Robin.

"What connections?"

"Working at the Defense Department."

Jo's bosom heaved and she let out a barklike laugh. "Thousands of people work at the Defense Department. It's not exactly as if I'm the Secretary of Defense."

"I just thought-"

"I'm nothing," said Jo. "Lowly G-12 nerds don't count."

She stabbed the grapefruit, turned the spoon, freeing the last bits of pulp.

More silence, heavier, oppressive. Geckos racing along the rail would have been welcome, but they were keeping a low profile tonight.

Pam said, "Gladys made lamb. It looks great."

Moreland came back out, a loping skeleton.

"An invitation. To all of us. Dinner at the base, tomorrow night. Casual formal. I shall wear a tie."

That night, I awoke at two in the morning and was unable to fall back asleep. As I got out of bed Robin turned away from me. I slipped into some shorts and a shirt and she rolled back.

"Y'okay, honey?"

"Think I'll just get up for a while," I whispered.

She managed to mumble, "Restless?"

"A little."

If her head was clear enough, she was thinking: Some things never change.

I bent and kissed her ear softly. "Maybe I'll take a little walk."

"… not too late."

I covered her shoulders, pocketed the room key, and slipped out of the bedroom. As I passed Spike's crate, he snored a greeting.

"Nighty-night, handsome."

My bare feet were silent on the landing carpet. The stairs were sturdy, not a creak.

Down in the entry, the stone floor was cool and welcome as summer lemonade. All the lights were off and the island silence saturated the house. I opened the front door and stepped outside.

The moon was ice-white and the sky pulsed with stars. Starlight frosted the trees and the fountain, turning the spatter to glycerine, giving life to the gargoyle roof tiles.

I walked to the gates. They were open and I looked down the long, sloping road, matte-black till it hit the onyx of the ocean.

Something moved along the grass at the road's edge.

Something else skittered in response.

I turned back, fully awake now. Maybe I'd look over a few more charts. I headed for my bungalow, then stopped when I heard a door shut.

Footsteps from the rear of the house. The back door, leading from the kitchen to the gravel paths.

Slow, deliberate footsteps. They ceased. Continued.

Someone came out into the open and stood looking up at the sky.

Moreland's unmistakable silhouette.

Not wanting to talk to him- or anyone else- I retreated into the shadows and watched as he descended the path, landing thirty feet in front of me.

Something clunked in his hand. A doctor's bag.

Same clothes he'd worn at dinner plus a shapeless cardigan sweater. He headed for the outbuildings, passed my bungalow, and continued past Robin's.

Stopping at his office.

At the door, he put the bag down, fumbled in his pocket, finally found the key but had some trouble inserting it in the lock. Starlight filtered through trees slashed his face diagonally, highlighting a cucumber of nose, the deep pouches columning his downturned mouth.

The door swung open. He picked up his bag and entered.

The door closed silently.

The lights went on, then off. The room stayed dark.

16

The following morning brought cooler air and cotton-swab clouds drifting from the east.

"Rain," said Gladys, as she poured our coffee. "Five or six days."

The clouds were translucent and filmy, not a hint of moisture.

"They pick up the water as they go," she said, offering the bread basket. "Sucking it up from the ocean. Do you like whole wheat?"

"Sure."

"Dr. Bill does too, but a lotta people don't. One time he had me bake rolls for the kids at school. They didn't eat too many."

She tugged the corner of the yellow tablecloth. We were the only ones at breakfast.

"Kids like the soft stuff. We used to get lots of white bread on the supply boats. Now, when we get anything, it's stale. Were you planning on swimming again?"

"Yes."

"Well, don't be fooled by those clouds: be sure to put on sunscreen. You got the nice olive skin, ma'am, but the doctor here, with those pretty blue eyes, he could burn."

Robin smiled. "I'll take good care of him."

"Men think they're tough, but they need to be taken care of. How about some nice fresh-squeezed juice?"

At the lagoon, the fish were quick learners, approaching for a handout but swimming away quickly when we had nothing to give them. Robin managed to get one large, latecoming, pink-and-yellow wrasse to nibble at her fingers. Then it too realized she was all show, and it shot away to a high mound of coral, where it snaked through a hole and disappeared.

She followed, head turning constantly, her eye for detail in full play. When she stopped, paddled in place, and waved me over, I joined her.

A tiny bald head floated in the crack. Chinless. Gray-brown skull. Oversized eyes bright with intelligence.

A baby octopus, legs as thin and flaccid as boiled spaghetti. It kept staring, finally retreated, slithering into a crevice, turning impossibly small.

We pressed closer.

It squirted ink in our faces.

I laughed, got water in my tube, and had to tread water to clear it. The surface of the water was a clean metal plate. The beach was empty.

I went under again, tagging along with a school of yellow surgeonfish, watching the bony, sharp protrusions under their pectoral fins pivot at the sense of threat, feeling the calmness of their blank, black stares.

Paradise.

We were back at the house by two. Jo's door was closed and an untouched lunch tray sat on the floor nearby. I imagined her tapping her keyboard in hopes of blunting her grief.

Studying the wind. Something too vast to control.

Moreland, on the other hand, delighted in manipulating nature's small variables. Had he once harbored grand plans for the island? Was his own grief what had kept him up last night, sitting in the dark?

I worked. No medical oddities, no gore, and the only untimely death I found was a young woman with ovarian cancer.

Another two cartons, more routine. Then the name of a drowning victim caught my eye.

Pierre Laurent, a twenty-four-year-old sailor lost in a squall near the Mariana Trench. The body had been returned to Aruk, and Moreland had certified the death, making note of the eighteen-year-old widow, four months pregnant with Aruk's future police chief.

Right below, Dennis's birth chart. A ten-pound baby, healthy.

Two more hours of tedium.

I liked that.

Just as I was heading for the back room to fetch yet another box, Ben knocked and came in. "Base just called. Navy copter's picking you up in an hour on South Beach."

"VIP treatment?"

"It's either that or they send down a big ship or rowboats." He took in the clutter of my desk and I thought I saw disapproval. "Need anything by way of supplies?"

"No thanks. Are you coming tonight?"

"Nope. One hour, you'll all be leaving from here together."