Emilio was speechless. It was his unvarying policy to tell the truth and in truth, after Alan Pace's death, it seemed all too possible that Yarbrough would not live through the night, but he couldn't find the words to speak the thought aloud.

"Perhaps," Manuzhai answered for him, raising her tail and letting it drop in what he had come to believe was the equivalent of a shrug. "Unless he gets what his heart wants."

Finding his voice, Emilio said, "Someone thinks it was something Dee ate or drank that makes him sick."

"Sometimes food makes you sick but many have eaten the same food as Dee and only Dee is sick," Manuzhai said, with unassailable logic. "You should find out what he wants and give it to him."

There was no real privacy in Runa life. The apartments had, at most, alcoves or irregularities that could serve to separate some habitual divisions of use. No one seemed to own any apartment, other than by occupying it. Families sometimes left to visit other villages and rooms might be left empty for a little while, but if another family liked the apartment, they moved in; when the travelers returned, they simply chose someplace else in the village to stay. Anne and George Edwards found the lack of a bedroom door embarrassing and they'd appropriated the most recessed region of Manuzhai and Chaypas's apartment, going so far as to set up a tent inside the dwelling. The rest had put up their camp beds in a different place every night or, if the apartment was filled with guests, simply dossed down on Runa cushions wherever there was space.

D.W.'s bed was toward the back of the apartment ordinarily, but Anne had it moved to the entrance so he could get out fast. He'd already had several bouts of intestinal distress and was now lying still, curled around a heated rock wrapped in cloth, eyes closed, face rigid. Sitting on the floor next to him, Anne put a hand on his head, pulling the damp hair off his forehead, and said, "Call if you need me, okay?" He made no sign that he'd heard, but she rose anyway and went to Emilio, who'd just returned with Manuzhai and Askama. "Did you find anything out?" she asked, motioning him away from D.W.'s bed and out to the terrace, where they could talk.

"Nothing useful medically." But he told her what Manuzhai had said.

"Thwarted desires, eh? How Freudian," Anne said softly. It was a Runa notion she had come up against before and she thought it might be a fundamental paradigm of Runa social life. It bore thinking about later, when she had the wits to consider it as an anthropologist.

Sofia joined Anne and Emilio outside. "Okay," Anne said unemotionally, "he went down fast, the diarrhea is very bad, and I am concerned. It's almost like Bengali cholera. If there's vomiting too and he gets seriously dehydrated, it could be big trouble."

"Anne, everyone's had diarrhea and gut pain off and on," said Emilio. "Perhaps he'll just have a bad night and be fine in the morning."

"But." Anne looked at him, her eyes serious.

"Yes," Emilio agreed finally. "But."

"So. What do we do now?" Sofia asked.

"Boil some water and whistle in the dark," said Anne. She stepped to the edge of the terrace and looked out across the gorge. It was a rare night on Rakhat, cloudless and starry, with a single, nearly full moon. The river splashed and foamed around the rocks below her, and she could hear the metallic squeal of a rusted iron gate blowing in the wind—the bizarre call of a redlight moranor. "At home, I'd put him on an IV drip and pump him full of drugs. I can approximate a rehydration fluid but the stuff he really needs is in the lander." Shit, Anne thought, and turned around to look at Sofia. "If George put the Ultra-Light together, could you—"

"No one goes back to the lander!" D.W. called out. He was in misery but he was neither comatose nor deaf, and he had heard at least some of what they'd said. "We ain't been back for weeks and the runway is prolly all overgrown. I don't want anybody killed just 'cause I got a damn bellyache."

Sofia went back inside and knelt by his bed. "I can land in the rough. We have to go back sometime. The longer we wait, the worse the runway will get. If you need saline and antibiotics, I'm going tonight."

It was public now, and everyone had an opinion. D.W. struggled to sit up and prove to Sofia he wasn't that sick. Jimmy and George got involved in the argument, with Marc wading in as well. They should have thought of this before, but the time had gone by quickly and besides, they had hesitated to introduce the notion of manned flight to the Runa. They were making things up as they went along; there were no guidelines except the negative example of their predecessors' disastrous interactions with technologically simple cultures on Earth. They had no wish to be taken for gods or to begin a cargo cult here. Even so, they had to go back for supplies eventually and they needed to reestablish the runway soon, so why not tonight?

Manuzhai, distressed by the dispute and swaying, took Askama by the hand and left the apartment to sit on the terrace. Emilio quietly apologized to her as she passed him, and then he went inside.

"Enough," he said softly, and silence fell. "D.W., lie down and be quiet. The rest of you, stop arguing. You are offending our hosts and the discussion is pointless. The Ultra-Light won't fly in darkness anyway, will it?" There was a burst of chagrined laughter. In the press of crisis, no one else had thought of that. Emilio ran his hands through his hair. "All right. Tomorrow is soon enough for a reconnaissance flight, which we will undertake even if D.W. is fine. I can explain the plane somehow. Anne, I'll take the night shift. The rest of you, get some sleep."

Nobody moved at first. Direct orders, issued from the mouth of Emilio Sandoz, Sofia Mendes was thinking, astonished. Evidently, the same observation had occurred to D. W. Yarbrough, who fell back laughing weakly and said, "And I thought you weren't management material." Emilio said something rude in Spanish, and the small knot of anxious people arrayed around Yarbrough's bed dispersed, leaving Emilio and D.W. alone finally, with Anne's repeated instructions—to force liquids and call her if there was any vomiting in addition to the diarrhea—ringing in their ears.

That night, they all were awakened over and over by the unavoidable disturbance caused when D.W. was forced to get up suddenly, and he became sicker by the hour. Then just before dawn, they woke again, this time to an unmistakable smell and D.W.'s groan of "Oh, my God," and lay awake, pretending to be unaware, listening to Emilio's soft Spanish reassurances and Yarbrough's humiliated weeping.

Askama slept on but Manuzhai abruptly rose and left the apartment. Anne lay rigid next to George, listening carefully and weighing the choices as Emilio cleaned up the mess, efficient as a night nurse and as unflappable. D.W. was already mortified. A thirty-year taboo against touch had already been broken. A woman's involvement would only make it worse, she decided. Anne heard Emilio insist that Yarbrough drink some more water, boiled and spiked with sugar and salt. The stuff tasted awful and D.W. gagged on it, but Emilio reminded him that dehydration could kill, and so with a practiced ease born of internship, Anne went back to sleep, trusting Emilio's judgment, if not God's will.

Moments later, Manuzhai returned with a stack of simple woven mats used for infants' beds. Emilio helped D.W. raise his hips and slipped one under him, before covering him again. Manuzhai, who had risen repeatedly to escort the two foreigners down the dark rocky pathway to the river and who had seen the tenderness of care one gave the other, now patted Yarbrough's arm in a gesture of reassurance that was startlingly human and left to spend the balance of the night elsewhere.