Abdullah shook hands with me, grinning like a schoolboy. He kicked the bike into gear, and roared off into the meandering traffic.

"Nice bike," a voice behind me said. It was Gemini George.

"Not real safe, though, those Enfields," answered another voice, with a strong Canadian accent. It was Scorpio George.

They lived on the street, sleeping in doorways and foraging for commissions among the tourists who wanted to buy hard drugs. And it showed. They were unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt in appearance. They were also intelligent, honest, and unconditionally loyal to one another.

"Hi, guys. How's it going?"

"Well, son, very well," Gemini George answered, the song of Liverpool in his accent, "We've got a client, you know, at about six o'clock tonight."

"Touch wood," Scorpio added, his dour frown already focusing on the troubles the evening might bring. "Should do all right out of it," Gemini said cheerily. "Nice client. Nice little earner."

"If it all goes okay, and nothing goes wrong," Scorpio mused fretfully.

"Must be something in the water," I muttered, watching the tiny white speck of Abdullah's shirt, or Lisa's skirt, disappear in the distance.

"How's that?" Gemini asked.

"Oh, nothing. Just, everyone seems to be falling in love lately."

I was thinking of Prabaker, Vikram, and Johnny Cigar. And I knew the look I'd seen in Abdullah's eyes as he'd ridden off. He was a long way more than interested.

"Funny you should mention that-what do you make of sexual motivation, Lin?" Scorpio asked me.

"Come again?"

"In a manner of speakin'," Gemini innuendoed, winking indecently.

"C'mon, be serious for a minute," Scorpio scolded. "Sexual motivation, Lin-what do you make of it?"

"What, exactly, do you mean?"

"Well, we're having a debate, you know-"

"A discussion," Gemini interrupted. "Not a debate. I'm discussin' with you, not debatin' you."

"We're having this discussion, about what it is that motivates people."

"I give you fair warnin', Lin," Gemini said, sighing mightily.

"We've been having this discussion for two weeks, and Scorpio still won't see reason."

"As I said, we're having this discussion about what it is that motivates people," Scorpio George pressed on, his Canadian accent and professorial manner combining in the documentary voice-over style that most irritated his English friend. "Y'see, Freud said we're motivated by the drive for sex. Adler disagreed, and said that it was the drive for power. Then Victor Frankl, he said sex and power were important drives, but when you can't get either one-no sex and no power-there's still something else that drives us on and keeps us goin'-"

"Yes, yes, the drive for meaning," Gemini added. "Which is really just the same thing in different words. We have a drive for power because power gives us sex, and we have a drive for meaning because that helps us to understand sex. It all comes down to sex in the end, no matter what you call it. Those other ideas, they're just the clothes, like. And when you get the clothes off, it's all about sex, innit?"

"No, you're wrong," Scorpio contradicted him. "We're all driven by a desire to find meaning in life. We have to know what it's all about. If it was just sex or power we'd still be chimpanzees.

It's _meaning that makes us human beings."

"It's sex that makes human beings, Scorpio," Gemini put in, his wicked leer working even harder, "but it's been so long, you've probably forgotten that."

A taxi pulled up beside us. The passenger in the back seat waited in a band of shadow for a moment, and then slowly leaned closer to the window. It was Ulla.

"Lin," she gasped. "I need your help."

She was wearing black-framed sunglasses, and there was a scarf tied around her head, covering her ash-blonde hair. Her face was pale and drawn and thin.

"This... has a vaguely familiar ring to it, Ulla," I replied, not moving toward the cab.

"Please. I mean it. Please, get in. I have something to tell you ... something you want to know."

I didn't move.

"Please, Lin. I know where Karla is. I will tell you, if you help me."

I turned and shook hands with the Georges. In the handshake with Scorpio, I passed over an American twenty-dollar bill. I'd taken it from my pocket when I first heard their voices, and I'd kept it ready to hand over when we parted. In their world, i knew, it was enough money-if their _nice _little _earner client fell through-to make them rich men for the night.

I opened the door and got into the cab. The driver pulled away into the traffic, checking me out often in his rear vision mirror.

"I don't know why you're angry with me," Ulla whined, removing her sunglasses and stealing glances at me. "Please don't be angry, Lin. Please don't be angry."

I wasn't angry. For the first time in too long, I wasn't angry.

_Scorpio's _right, I thought: __it's meaning that makes us _human. There I was, with just the mention of a name, diving into the ocean of feeling again. I was looking for a woman, looking for Karla. I was involving myself in the world, taking risks. I had a reason. I had a quest.

And then I knew, in the excited moment, what it was that had caused my desolate mood at Madjid's, and put so much anger in me that day. I knew with perfect understanding that the momentary dream-the little boy's dream that Khader really _was my father- had plunged me into that restless, tide-rip of despair that fathers and sons too often let their love become. And seeing it, realising it, remembering it, I found the strength to lift the darkness from my heart. I looked at Ulla. I stared into the blue labyrinth of her eyes and I wondered, without anger or sorrow, if she'd played a part in betraying me, and having me put in prison.

She reached out to put a hand on my knee. The grip was strong, but her hand was shaking. I felt the scent-filled seconds expand around us. We were trapped, both of us, held fast, each in our different ways. And once again, we were about to set the web of our connection trembling.

"Relax. I'll help you if I can," I said, calmly and firmly. "Now, tell me about Karla."

FOUR

At midnight's horizon the great milky wheel of stars rose wet and shivering from the waves, and the silver yellow light of a gibbous moon settled on the sea, glistening the tinsel-crested swell. It was a warm, still, and perfectly clear night. The deck of the Goa ferry was crowded, but I'd managed to stake out a clear space a little distance apart from a large group of young tourists. They were stoned, most of them, on grass, hash, and acid. Dance music thumped from the black, shouting mouths of a portable hi-fi. Sitting among their backpacks, they swayed and clapped in time, called out to one another over the music, and laughed, often. They were happy, on their way to Goa. The first time tourists were moving toward a dream. The old hands were returning to the one place in the world where they felt truly free.

Sailing toward Karla, looking out at the stars, listening to the kids who'd bought spaces on the deck of the ferry, I understood their hopeful, innocent excitement, and in a small and distant way I even shared it. But my face was hard. My eyes were hard.

And that hardness divided my feelings from theirs as cleanly and inviolably as the metre-wide space on the deck separated me from their tangled, high-spirited party. And as I sat there, on the swaying, gently plunging ferry, I thought about Ulla: I thought about the fear that had glittered in her sapphire-blue eyes when she'd talked to me in the back of the cab.

Ulla needed money that night, a thousand dollars, and I gave it to her. She needed me to accompany her to the hotel room where she'd left her clothes and personal belongings. We went there together and, despite her trembling fear, we collected her things and paid the bill without incident. She was in trouble, through some business deal involving Modena and Maurizio. The deal, like too many of Maurizio's quick scams, had soured. The men who'd lost their money weren't content, as others had been, to accept the loss and let the matter ride. They wanted their money, and they wanted someone to bleed, and not necessarily in that order.