3

Back at the village Elizabeth found she had no appetite for more work. She was still waiting for a consignment of proper medical supplies, and a doctor had been promised for more than a month. She had done what she could to see that the villagers were getting a balanced diet — but food supplies were limited — and she had been able to deal with the more obvious ailments such as sores, rashes, and so forth. Last week she had helped deliver a baby for one of the women, and it wasn’t until this that she had felt she was doing any good at all.

Now, with the strange encounter by the river still fresh in her mind, she decided to return to headquarters early.

She found Luiz before she left.

“If those men come back,” she said, “try to find out what it is they want. I’ll be back in the morning. If they come before I arrive, try to keep them here. Find out where they’re from.”

It was nearly seven miles to the headquarters, and it was evening when she arrived. The place was almost deserted: many of the field operatives stayed out for several nights on end. Tony Chappell was there, though, and he intercepted her as she headed for her room.

“Are you free this evening, Liz? I thought we might—”

“I’m very tired. I thought I’d have an early night.”

When she had first arrived, Elizabeth had felt the first stirrings of attraction towards Chappell, and made the mistake of showing them. There were only a few women at the station, and he had responded with great eagerness. Since then he had hardly left her alone, and although she now found him very dull and self-centred she hadn’t yet discovered a polite way of cooling his unwelcome ardour.

He tried to persuade her to do whatever it was he wanted, but after a few minutes she managed to escape to her room.

She dumped her bag on the bed, undressed, and took a long shower.

Later, she went to find something to eat and, inevitably, Tony joined her.

During the meal, she remembered she’d been meaning to ask him something.

“Do you know any towns around here, called Earth?”

“Earth? Like the planet?”

“That’s what it sounded like. I might have misheard.”

“I don’t know any. Whereabouts?”

“Somewhere round here. Not far.”

He shook his head. “Urf? Or Mirth?” He laughed loudly, and dropped his fork. “Are you sure?”

“No… not really. I think I must have got it wrong.”

In his own inimitable way, Tony continued to make bad puns until once again she found an excuse to get away.

There was a large map of the region in one of the offices, but she couldn’t see anything that might be where Helward said he lived. He had described it as a city lying in the south, but there was no large settlement for nearly sixty miles.

She was genuinely exhausted, and returned to her room.

She undressed, and took the two sketches Helward had given her and taped them to the wall by the bed. The one he had drawn of her was so strange…

She looked at it more closely. The paper it was drawn on was evidently quite old, for its edges were yellowed. Looking at the edges, she realized that the top and bottom were slightly burred where they had been torn, but the line was quite straight.

Experimentally, she ran the tip of her finger along it. The sensation was a quite regular vibration: the paper had been perforated…

Careful not to damage the drawing, she separated the tape from the wall, and took the sketch down.

On the back she discovered that a column of numbers had been printed down one side. One or two of them were asterisked.

Printed in pale blue ink along the side were the words: IBM Multifold ™.

She taped the sketch back on the wall… and stared at it uncomprehendingly for a long time.

4

In the morning Elizabeth put in another teleprinted request for a doctor, then set off for the village.

The daytime heat was flooding the village when she arrived, and already the listless mood of lethargy that had so infuriated her at first had set in. She sought out Luiz, who was sitting in the shadow of the church with two other men.

“Well… have they been back?”

“Not today, Menina Khan.”

“When did they say they’d come again?”

He shrugged idly. “Sometime. Today, tomorrow.”

“Have you tried that — ?”

She stopped, irritated with herself. She had meant to take the purported fertilizer to headquarters to have it analysed, and in her preoccupation had forgotten it.

“Let me know if they come.”

She went to see Maria and her new baby, but her mind was not fully on her work. Later she supervised a meal, which was served to all comers, then talked to Father dos Santos in the workshop. All this time she was aware that she had one ear cocked for any sounds of horses.

No longer trying to make any excuse for herself, she went down to the stable and saddled up the horse. She rode away from the village, towards the river.

She was trying not to dwell on her own thoughts, trying not to examine her own motives, but it was inevitable. The last twenty-four hours had been momentous in their own way. She had come out here to work in the field because of a feeling that her life at home was wasted, only to find a new kind of frustration here. In spite of intents and appearances, all the voluntary workers could offer was a sight of recovery to the impoverished people here. It was too little, too late. A few government handouts of grain, or a few inoculations, or a repaired church were all right, and better than nothing. But the root of the problem remained unsolved in practice: the central economy had failed. There was nothing on this land but what the people themselves could take.

The intrusion of Helward into her life was the first event of interest she had experienced since she arrived. She knew, as she rode the horse across the scrubland towards the trees, that her motives were mixed. Perhaps there was simple curiosity there, but it ran deeper.

The men on the station were obsessed with themselves and what they imagined their roles to be; they spoke in abstracts about group psychology, social readjustment, patterns of behaviour… and in her more cynical moods she found such an outlook simply pathetic. Apart from the unfortunate Tony Chappell, she had formed no kind of interest in any of the men, which was not as she had anticipated at all before she arrived.

Helward was different. She refrained from spelling it out to herself, but she knew why she was riding out to find him.

She found the place on the river-bank, and allowed her horse to drink. Later, she tethered it in the shade, and sat down by the water to wait. Again she tried to blank out the turmoil of mental activity: thoughts, desires, questions. Concentrating hard on the physical environment, she lay back on the bank in the sunshine and closed her eyes. She listened to the sound of the water as it ran across the pebbles of the river-bed, the sound of the gentle wind in the trees, the humming of insects, the smell of dry undergrowth, hot soil, warmth.

A long time passed. Behind her, the horse whisked its tail every few seconds, patiently flicking away the swarm of flies.

She opened her eyes as soon as she heard the sound of the other horse, and sat up.

Helward was there on the opposite bank. He raised his hand in greeting, and she waved back.

He dismounted immediately, and walked quickly along the bank until he was opposite her. She smiled to herself: he was evidently in high spirits because he was fooling around, trying to amuse her. When he stood opposite her, he leaned forward for some reason and tried to stand on his hands. After two attempts he made it, then toppled right over and landed with a shout and a splash in the river.

Elizabeth jumped up, and ran through the shallow water towards him.