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tight at the waist, and a few were still stitched with campaign ribbons from the Great War twenty years ago, when the nation was a colony.
    Already Zoë”s high spirits were discovering a humorous variety show in the people near them when somebody called out, “Rayner!”
    Her heart must have sunk as his did. She said, “Oh bloody hell. It”s Ivar and Felicie.”
    They were sitting alone at a table for four, wanting company. Ivar spread out his arms in amused welcome. Atthat moment his urbanity, his inability to be surprised by human affairs, came as a relief. He merely kissed them both perfunctorily and said, “How good to find friends!”
    But Felicie flung her arms furiously around Zoë. “You cheat! You didn”t
tell
me.” She turned to Ivar. “She tells me she needs a holiday but never says
where
or
who with.”
    “You never listen,” said Zoë.
    Felicie said, “But I”d have listened to
that!”
    So they settled at the table and lapsed into the ease of old friends. Their meal came and went, and they were left drinking the rough local wine from the hills. Rayner felt happy, and for the first time in years he drank too much. Felicie poured out news at Zoë as if they”d been parted six months, telling anecdotes, soliciting approval, and scattering all her chatter with reflex self-criticism. “I”m so forgetful, I … I”m so stupid, I … I …” Her voice fluted and piped. Rayner, watching from the corner of his eye, found the two laughably different. Mist-haired Felicie gave an illusion almost of transparency, while beside her Zoë was all color and bite. Several times it occurred to him that Felicie was some sort of ghost. In her irrecoverable loss of self, he thought, she was the person whom Zoë was refusing to become.
    Ivar was saying, “I thought they”d have wanted you in town now.”
    “You mean the disease?” Rayner shook his head. “We can”t treat it. We can pretend, of course, we always do. But basically we don”t know anything.”
    Ivar said levelly, “You”ll be able to track it down in the end. How many cases are reported now? Eleven?”
    “We”d be able to trace it better if we knew what it was. But we”ve taken blood and urine tests and come up with nothing at all. We”ve even X-rayed for cancer, but … nothing.”
    “You think it”s infectious?”
    “I don”t know. Nothing”s shown up in the blood.”
    He said, “Well then, the people who”ve caught it canbe monitored. There must be some common factor.”
    “They”re all sorts. Both sexes, old, young. Two are miners, one”s an optician. A bank clerk …” The school medical officer—Rayner”s amateur analyst—had even reported the rash on a child of six.
    Ivar said, “How strange,” but he said it reluctantly, acknowledging only a temporary barrier which would soon be cleared away. That was typical, Rayner thought. Ivar had always spread this calm of logic and reasonableness about him, which left no place for the unknown. Now he added, “People say it”s a savage”s disease—even that they”re spreading it on purpose.”
    “There”s no evidence for that!” It was maddening, Rayner thought, how Ivar could voice a piece of pure speculation, and in his measured tone the idea would take on sanity. Whereas Rayner, when he refuted it, sounded harshly precarious.
    Ivar said, “I”d have thought it permissible, under the circumstances, to take in a few of the local savages for medical inspection.”
    “It”d be harder to diagnose in natives than in anybody.” Rayner remembered the blotched torso of the old man at the holy site. “I think they generally suffer the opposite complaint. Skin depigmentation. And apart from discoloration the only symptoms are vague. Just a general malaise. And some patients complain of aching eyeballs.”
    “Did you know,” Ivar said, “that during the last savage troubles fourteen years ago they systematically poisoned the town”s water supply?”
    “I never heard