The visitor left a small tape recorder of a new CII design that had the "play" and "erase" heads reversed, both operative in the "play" mode, so that the message was destroyed as it was played. The model was considered a marked improvement over its more secretive predecessor, which erased before playing.

As soon as he was alone, Jonathan opened the lid of the recorder and found an envelope taped to the underside. It was a confirmation from his bank of the deposit of one hundred thousand dollars to his account. Confused, he pushed the "play" button, and Dragon's voice spoke to him, even thinner and more metallic than usual through the small speaker. He had only to close his eyes to see the iridescent ivory face emerging through the gloom, and the pink eyes under tufted cotton eyebrows.

My dear Hemlock... You have by now opened the envelope and have discovered—with surprise and pleasure, I hope—that we have decided to pay the full sum, despite our earlier threat to deduct your more outrageous extravagances... I consider this only fair in light of the discomfort and expense your injuries have cost you... It seems obvious to us that you were unable to make the sanction target reveal himself, and so you took the sure, if grimly uneconomical, path of sanctioning all three men... But you always were extravagant... We assume the killing of M. Bidet was accomplished during your first night on the mountain, under cover of dark... How you contrived to precipitate the other two men to their deaths is not clear to us, nor does it interest us particularly... Results concern us more than methods, as you may recall.

Now, Hemlock, I really ought to rebuke you for the shopworn condition in which you returned Clement Pope... You escape my wrath only because I had all along planned to bestow some deserved punishment on him... And why not at your hands?... Pope had been assigned to the Search task of locating your target, and he failed to identify his man... As an eleventh-hour expedient, he came up with the notion of setting you up a decoy... It was certainly second-rate thinking and the product of a frightened and incompetent man, but there were no viable alternatives open to us... I had faith that you would survive the admittedly tense situation, and, as you see, I was correct... Pope has been removed from SS and has been assigned to the less demanding task of writing vice-presidential addresses... After the beating you gave him, he is quite useless to us... He suffers from what in a good hunting dog would be called gun-shyness.

It is with great reluctance that I place your file among the "inactives," although I will confide in you that Mrs. Cerberus does not share my melancholy... To tell the truth, I suspect in my heart of hearts that we shall be working together before long... Considering your tastes, this money will last no more than four years, after which—who can say?

Congratulations on your ingenious solution to the crisis, and good luck to you in your Long Island shrine to your self-image.

The end of the tape flap-flap-flapped as the take-up reel spun. Jonathan turned the machine off and set it aside. He shook his head slowly and said to himself helplessly, "Oh, God."

"Let me see now. It was forty-two down by—one, two, three, four..."

Ben had difficulty getting in the door. He swore and kicked at it viciously as he stumbled in, a huge cellophane-wrapped basket of fruit in his arms.

"Here!" he said gruffly, and he thrust the crinkling burden toward Jonathan, who had been laughing uncontrollably since first Ben burst in.

"What is this wonderful thing you bring me?" Jonathan asked between racks of laughter.

"I don't know. Fruit and such shit. They hustle them down in the lobby. What's so goddam funny?"

"Nothing." Jonathan was limp with laughing. "It's just about the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me, Ben."

"Oh, fuck off."

The bed shook with a fresh attack of laughter. While it was true that Ben looked silly grasping a beribboned basket in his ample paw, Jonathan's laughter carried notes of hysteria born of boredom and cabin fever.

Ben set the basket on the floor and slouched down in a bedside chair, his arms folded across his chest, the image of grumpy patience. "I'm real glad I cheer you up like this."

"I'm sorry. Look. All right." He sniffed back the last dry, silent laugh. "I got your postcard. You and Anna?"

Ben waved his hand. "Funny things happen."

Jonathan nodded. "Did you find..."

"Yeah, we found them at the base. Anderl's father decided to have him buried in the meadow within sight of the face."

"Good."

"Yes. Good."

And there was nothing more to say. This was the first time Ben had visited Jonathan in the hospital, but Jonathan understood. There is nothing to say to a sick man.

After a pause, Ben asked if they were treating him all right. And Jonathan said yes. And Ben said good. Ben mentioned the Valparaiso hospital after Aconcagua where their roles had been reversed while Ben recuperated from toe amputations. Jonathan remembered and even managed to dredge up a couple of names and places that they could both nod over energetically, then let slip away.

Ben walked around the room and looked out the window.

"How are the nurses?"

"Starched."

"Have you invited any aboard?"

"No. They're a pretty rank lot."

"That's too bad."

"Yes, it is."

Ben sat down again and flicked lint off his pants for a while. Then he told Jonathan that he intended to catch a plane back to the States that afternoon. "I should be in Arizona by tomorrow morning."

"Give my love to George."

"I'll do that."

Ben sighed, then stretched vigorously, then said something about taking care of yourself, then rose to go. When he picked up the fruit basket and put it near the bed, Jonathan began to laugh afresh. This time Ben stood there taking it. It was better than the long silences. But after a while he began to feel stupid, so he put the basket down and made for the door.

"Oh, Ben?"

"What?"

Jonathan brushed away the tears of laughter. "How did you get mixed up in the Montreal business in the first place?"

...Ben had stood for many minutes at the window, his forehead resting against the frame, looking down on the traffic that crawled along the colorless street lined with optimistic saplings. When at last he spoke, his voice was husky and subdued. "You really took me off balance."

"That's the way I had rehearsed it while I lay here counting holes in the ceiling."

"Well, it worked just fine, ol' buddy. How long have you known?"

"Just a couple of days. At first it was just bits and pieces. I kept trying to picture the man with the limp in Montreal, and none of the men on the mountain quite fit. You were the only other person coming for the climb. Then all sorts of things fell into place. Like the coincidence of meeting Mellough at your lodge. And why would George Hotfort stick me with a half dose? Miles wouldn't do that. He already had my answer. And why would George do that for Miles? So far as I know, there was only one thing that really interested her, and Miles couldn't offer that. But she might do something like that for you.

And you might want her to do it because you wanted me to kill Miles quickly, before he could tell me who the man in Montreal was."

Ben nodded fatalistically. "I used to wake up in a sweat, imagining that Mellough had told you out there on the desert, and you were playing cat and mouse with me."

"I never gave Miles a chance to tell me anything."

It was Jonathan who broke the ensuing silence. "How did you get mixed up with him?"

Ben continued to stare out the window at the traffic. Evening was setting in, and the first streetlamps had come on. "You know how I tried to make a go of it with that little climbing school after I couldn't climb anymore. Well, it never did pay for itself. Not many people came, and those who did—like you—were mostly old climbing buddies what I hated to charge. There's not a whole lot of ads in the help-wanted pages for gimpy ex-climbers. I suppose I could have found some nine-to-five sort of thing, but that isn't my style. I guess you know what I mean, considering what you do to make your money."