The native released Kimi into the hands of two younger men and regarded Tuck. “You pilot?” He said in English.

“Damn right I am. And I’m sick and infected and stuff, so if you eat me you’re going to die like a gut-shot dog—and in addition I would like to add that I don’t taste anything like Spam.” Tuck was breathless from the diatribe and he was starting to black out from trying to hold his head back.

The native said something in his own language, which Tuck took to be “Cut him down,” because a second later he found himself falling into the arms of four strong islanders who lowered him to the ground.

Tucker’s arms and legs burned as the blood rushed back into them. Above him he saw a circle of moonlit brown faces. He managed to grab enough breath to squeak, “Soon as I’m on my feet, your asses are mine. You all might as well just go practice falling down for a while so you’ll be used to it. Just order the body bags now ’cause when I’m done, you’re going to look like piles of chocolate pudding. They’ll be cleaning you up with shovels—you…” Tuck’s breath caught in his throat and he passed out.

Malink looked at his old friend Favo and smiled. “Excellent threat,” he said.

“Most excellent threat,” Favo said.

Sarapul pushed his way through the kneeling men. “He’s dead. Let’s eat him.”

“He no like that,” Kimi said. “Not even for free.”

The Sorcerer heard the lab door open and turned from his microscope just

in time to catch her as she ran into his arms.

“Did you see, ’Bastian? Was I great or what?”

He held her for a second, smelling the perfume in her hair. “You were great,” he said. When he released her, there were two pink spots on his lab coat from the rouge she had rubbed on her nipples.

She skipped around the lab like a little girl. “Malink was shaking in his shoes,” she said. Well, not in his shoes, but you know what I mean.” She stopped and looked into the microscope. “What’s this?”

He watched a delicate line of muscle run down the back of her thigh and postulated what kind of genetics went into preserving a

body like that on Chee-tos and vodka. He thought a lot about genetics lately. “I’m doing the last of the tissue typing. I should be finished in a couple of days.”

She said, “Did you like ‘String of Pearls’ better than ‘In the Mood’?”

High Priestess of the nonsequiter, Sebastian thought. “It was perfect. You were perfect.”

She moved away from the microscope and paced around the table, frowning now, as if she was working on an equation in her head. “I’ve been thinking about ‘Pennsylvania 6-5000,’ putting the ninjas in top hats and tails in kind of a chorus line. You know, they could carry me across the runway and pause and shout the chorus. There’s no singing on the re-cording; they would just have to shout. I mean, if we have to have them around, they might as well do something.” She stopped pacing and turned to him. “What do you think?”

It took Sebastian a second to realize that she was serious. “I’m not sure that would be a good idea. The Shark People are suspicious of the nin—, the guards. I wish Akiro would have listened to me and found some non-Japanese. This business with Malink’s dream is a sign that our credibility is slipping.”

“That’s what I’m saying. If we show that they’re under the control of the Sky Priestess—”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Beth.”

She dismissed the thought with a wave. “Fine. We can talk about it later.”

Sebastian wanted to stop himself before he ruined her ebullient mood, but he pressed on despite himself. “Don’t you think that no coffee or sugar for a month was a little harsh?”

“You really don’t get it, do you? I’ll give it all back after a week, ’Bastian, and they’ll love me for it. Generosity of the gods: The Sky Priestess taketh away and the Sky Priestess giveth back. It’s how these things work. You put a few people on a boat, then you drown every living creature on the planet—the people on the boat are pretty goddamn grateful.” She flipped the end of her red scarf over her shoulder.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”

“You make the rules and you play the game, ’Bastian. What’s wrong with that?”

He turned from her and pretended to go through some notes. “I guess you’re right,” he said, but he felt acid rising from his stomach. She was calling it a game.

She came up behind him, pushed her breasts into his back, and reached around inside his lab coat. “Poor baby. You still feel like you did the right thing by burning your Beatles records.”

“Beth, please.”

She unzipped his khakis and snaked her hand in his fly. “Deep down, you feel like John Lennon got what he deserved, don’t you, sweetheart? Saying he was more popular than Jesus. That loony-toon Chapman was the instrument of God, wasn’t he?”

He whirled on her and grabbed her shoulders. “Yes, dammit.” His face had gone hot. He could feel the veins pulse in his forehead, in his crotch. “That’s enough, Beth.”

“No, it’s not.” She ripped open the front of his trousers and fell back on the lab table, pulling him on top of her. “Come on, show me the wrath of the Sorcerer.”

Sepie washed the pilot’s hair in a bowl with pounded coconut and brackish water. She had been taking care of the unconscious white man for two days and it was starting to get tedious. She was mispel of the bachelors’ house, and washing and ministering to a sick and stinky white man was not in her job description. This was women’s work.

There are legends in the islands, and some of the old men swear they are true, that the women who service the bachelors’ houses, the mispels, were taken to the secret island of Maluuk, known only to the high navigators, where they were trained in the art of pleasuring a man.

After months of training, a mispel was required to pass a test before she was allowed to return to her home island to take over the duty of tending to the sexual needs of the men of the bachelors’ house. The test? She was sent into the ocean with a ripe brown coconut clutched between her thighs, and there she floated, in heavy surf, for the entire circuit of the tides. Should the coconut pop loose or the mispel touch it with her hands, she failed the test (although there was some leeway in the event of shark attack). It is said that the inner thighs of the mispels of old were as strong as net cable. The second part of the test required the girl to find a delicate dragonfly orchid with a straight stem, and while her teachers looked on, she would lower herself over the flower until it disappeared inside of her, then rise again after a few minutes, leaving the stem unbent and the petals unbruised. The mispel held a position of honor, respected and revered among the is-landers. She was not required to do housekeeping, cooking, or weaving, and while the other women

toiled in taro fields from the time they could walk, a mispel was allowed to nap in the shade, conserving her energy for her nocturnal duties. A mispel often ended her tour of duty by marrying a man of high status. No stigma followed her into married life, and she would be sought out to the end of her days by the other women for advice on handling men.

Sepie, however, had not been chosen because of any special skill, nor had she passed through any vigorous concubinal boot camp. Sepie had been marked for mispel from the moment of her menses, when she emerged from the women’s house with her lavalava tied a bit too high and showing a bit too much cappuccino thigh, her skin rubbed with copra until she glistened all over, and her breasts shining like polished wooden tea cups. She had painted her lips with the juice of crushed berries and peppered her long black hair with scores of sweet jasmine blossoms. She giggled coquettishly in the presence of all the men, danced dangerously close to the taboo of speaking to them in public, risked beatings by refusing to fall to her knees when her male cousins passed, and went about her chores with a wiggly energy that had caused more than one of the distracted village boys to fall out of a breadfruit tree during harvest. (She broke ankles as well as hearts.) Sepie was all titter and tease, a lazy girl who excelled at leisure, a natural at invoking and denying desire, a wet dream deferred. At fifteen she took up residence in the bachelors’ house and had lived there for four years.