He kissed her as he worked, and swallowed thepestilence with her spittle; his hands came off her bodygritty with her contagious cells. He knew none of this, ofcourse. He was perfectly innocent of what corruption heembraced, and took into himself with every uninspiredthrust.

At last, he finished. There was no gasp, no cry. Hesimply stopped his clockwork motion and climbed offher, wiping himself with the edge of the sheet, andbuttoning himself up again.

Guides were calling her. She had journeys to make,reunions to look forward to. But she did not want togo; at least not yet. She steered the vehicle of herspirit to a fresh vantage-point, where she could bettersee Kavanagh's face. Her sight, or whatever sense thiscondition granted her, saw clearly how his features werepainted over a groundwork of muscle, and how, beneaththat intricate scheme, the bones sheened. Ah, the bone.He was not Death of course; and yet he was. He had theface, hadn't he? And one day, given decay's blessing,he'd show it. Such a pity that a scraping of flesh camebetween it and the naked eye.

Come away, the voices insisted. She knew they couldnot be fobbed off very much longer. Indeed there weresome amongst them she thought she knew. A moment,she pleaded, only a moment more.

Kavanagh had finished his business at the murder-scene. He checked his appearance in the wardrobemirror, then went to the door. She went with him,intrigued by the utter banality of his expression. Heslipped out onto the silent landing and then down thestairs, waiting for a moment when the night-porter wasotherwise engaged before stepping out into the street,and liberty.

Was it dawn that washed the sky, or the illuminations?Perhaps she had watched him from the corner of theroom longer than she'd thought - hours passing asmoments in the state she had so recently achieved.

Only at the last was she rewarded for her vigil, as alook she recognised crossed Kavanagh's face. Hunger!The man was hungry. He would not die of the plague,any more than she had. Its presence shone in him -gave a fresh lustre to his skin, and a new insistence tohis belly.

He had come to her a minor murderer, and was goingfrom her as Death writ large. She laughed, seeing theself-fulfilling prophecy she had unwittingly engineered.For an instant his pace slowed, as if he might have heardher. But no; it was the drummer he was listening for,beating louder than ever in his ear and demanding, ashe went, a new and deadly vigour in his every step.

LOCKE RAISED HIS eyes to the trees. The wind was moving in them, and the commotion of their ladenbranches sounded like the river in full spate. One impersonation of many. When he had first come to the junglehe had been awed by the sheer multiplicity of beast andblossom, the relentless parade of life here. But he hadlearned better. This burgeoning diversity was a sham;the jungle pretending itself an artless garden. It was not.Where the untutored trespasser saw only a brilliant showof natural splendours, Locke now recognised a subtleconspiracy at work, in which each thing mirrored someother thing. The trees, the river; a blossom, a bird.In a moth's wing, a monkey's eye; on a lizard's back,sunlight on stones. Round and round in a dizzying circleof impersonations, a hall of mirrors which confoundedthe senses and would, given time, rot reason altogether.See us now, he thought drunkenly as they stood aroundCherrick's grave, look at how we play the game too.We're living; but we impersonate the dead better thanthe dead themselves.

The corpse had been one scab by the time they'dhoisted it into a sack and carried it outside to thismiserable plot behind Tetelman's house to bury. Therewere half a dozen other graves here. All Europeans, tojudge by the names crudely burned into the woodencrosses; killed by snakes, or heat, or longing.

Tetelman attempted to say a brief prayer in Spanish,but the roar of the trees, and the din of birds makingtheir way home to their roosts before night came down,all but drowned him out. He gave up eventually, andthey made their way back into the cooler interiorof the house, where Stumpf was sitting, drinkingbrandy and staring inanely at the darkening stain onthe floorboards.

Outside, two of Tetelman's tamed Indians wereshovelling the rank jungle earth on top of Cherrick'ssack, eager to be done with the work and awaybefore nightfall. Locke watched from the window.Tiie grave-diggers didn't talk as they laboured, butfilled the shallow grave up, then flattened the earthas best they could with the leather-tough soles oftheir feet. As they did so the stamping of the groundtook on a rhythm. It occurred to Locke that themen were probably the worse for bad whisky; heknew few Indians who didn't drink like fishes. Now,staggering a little, they began to dance on Cherrick'sgrave.

'Locke?'

Locke woke. In the darkness, a cigarette glowed.As the smoker drew on it, and the tip burned moreintensely, Stumpf s wasted features swam up out of thenight.

'Locke? Are you awake?'

'What do you want?'

'I can't sleep,' the mask replied, 'I've been thinking.The supply plane comes in from Santarem the day aftertomorrow. We could be back there in a few hours. Outof all this.'

'Sure.'

'I mean permanently,' Stumpf said. 'Away.'

'Permanently?'

Stumpf lit another cigarette from the embers of his lastbefore saying, 'I don't believe in curses. Don't think Ido.'

'Who said anything about curses?'

'You saw Cherrick's body. What happened tohim ...'

'There's a disease,' said Locke, 'what's it called? -when the blood doesn't set properly?'

'Haemophilia,' Stumpf replied. 'He didn't havehaemophilia and we both know it. I've seen himscratched and cut dozens of times. He mended likeyou or I.'

Locke snatched at a mosquito that had alighted on hischest and ground it out between thumb and forefinger.

'All right. Then what killed him?'

'You saw the wounds better than I did, but it seemedto me his skin just broke open as soon as he wastouched.'

Locke nodded. 'That's the way it looked.'

'Maybe it's something he caught off the Indians.'

Locke took the point.'/ didn't touch any of them,' hesaid.

'Neither did I. But he did, remember?'

Locke remembered; scenes like that weren't easy toforget, try as he might. 'Christ,' he said, his voicehushed. 'What a fucking situation.'

'I'm going back to Santarem. I don't want themcoming looking for me.'

'They're not going to.'

'How do you know? We screwed up back there. Wecould have bribed them. Got them off the land someother way.'

'I doubt it. You heard what Tetelman said. Ancestralterritories.'

'You can have my share of the land,' Stumpf said, 'Iwant no part of it.'

'You mean it then? You're getting out?'

'I feel dirty. We're spoilers, Locke.'

'It's your funeral.'

'I mean it. I'm not like you. Never really had thestomach for this kind of thing. Will you buy my thirdoff me?'

'Depends on your price.'

'Whatever you want to give. It's yours.'

Confessional over, Stumpf returned to his bed, and laydown in the darkness to finish off his cigarette. It wouldsoon be light. Another jungle dawn: a precious interval,all too short, before the world began to sweat. Howhe hated the place. At least he hadn't touched anyof the Indians; hadn't even been within breathingdistance of them. Whatever infection they'd passedon to Cherrick he could surely not be tainted. In lessthan forty-eight hours he would be away to Santarem,and then on to some city, any city, where the tribecould never follow. He'd already done his penance,hadn't he? Paid for his greed and his arrogance withthe rot in his abdomen and the terrors he knewhe would never quite shake off again. Let that bepunishment enough, he prayed, and slipped, beforethe monkeys began to call up the day, into a spoiler'ssleep.