“Not people I know. Come over here where I can see you. I am old and my neck won’t turn that far around.”

Kimi walked a crescent around the tree and crouched at ready in front of the old man.

Sarapul said, “You were going to kill me.”

“If you ate Roberto.”

“I like that. Nobody kills anybody anymore. Oh, the young ones are talking about killing you, but I think Malink will talk them out of it.”

Kimi cleared his throat. “Were you going to eat me when they killed me?”

“Someone brought that up at the drinking circle. I don’t remember who.”

“Then how do I know you did not eat Roberto?”

“Look at me, little one. I am a hundred years old maybe. Sometimes I go to the beach to pee and the tides change before my water comes. How would I catch a bat?”

Kimi sat down on the ground across from the old man and dropped his knife in the gravel. “Something happened to Roberto. He flew off.”

“Maybe he found a girl bat,” Sarapul said. “Maybe he will come back. You want a drink?” The old cannibal offered his jar of tuba to Kimi, who leaned forward and snatched it before retreating out of knife range.

Kimi took a sip and grimaced. “Why are they going to kill me?”

“They say you are a girl-man and that you make Sepie forget her duties as mispel. And they don’t like you. Don’t worry, no one kills anyone anymore. It is just drunk talk.”

Kimi hung his head. “Sepie sent me away from the bachelors’ house. She is mad at me. I have nowhere to go.”

Sarapul nodded in sympathy, but said nothing. He’d been exiled for so long that he’d gotten used to the alienation, but he remembered how he had felt when Malink had first banished him.

“You speak our language pretty good,” Sarapul said.

“My father was from Satawan. He was a great navigator. He taught me.”

“You’re a navigator?” In the old days the navigators stood above even the chiefs—and just below the gods. As a boy, Sarapul idolized the two navigators of Alualu. The long-dead dream of his boyhood surfaced and he remembered learning from them, watching them draw star charts in the sand and stand at the beach lecturing on tides and currents and winds. He had wanted to be a navigator, had begun the training, for in the rigid caste system of the Yapese islands it was the one way for a man to distin-guish himself. But one of the navigators had died of a fever and the other was killed in a fight before he could pass on his knowledge. The navigators and warriors were ghosts of the past. If this girl-man was a navigator, then the

bachelors were piss ants to talk of killing him. Sarpul felt infused with an energy he hadn’t felt in years.

“I can show you something,” Sarapul said. He tried to climb to his feet and fell back into a crouch. Kimi took him by a bony arm and helped him up. “Come,” Sarapul said.

The old man led Kimi down the path to the beach and stopped at the water’s edge. He began to sing, his voice like dried palm leaves rattling in the wind. He waved his arms in arcs, then threw them wide to the sky so that his chest looked as if it might crack open like a rotten breadfruit. And the wind came up.

He took handfuls of sand and cast them into the wind, then clapped his hands and resumed singing until the palms above them were waving in the wind. Then he stopped.

“Now we wait,” he said. He pointed out to sea. “Watch there.”

A column of fog rose off the ocean at the horizon and boiled black and silver into a huge thunderhead. Sarapul clapped his hands again and a lightning bolt ripped out of the cloud and across the sky like a jagged white fissure in blue glass. The thunderclap was instant, deafening, and crackled for a full ten seconds.

Sarapul turned to Kimi, who was staring at the thunderhead with his mouth open. “Can you do that?”

Kimi shook off his astonishment with a shiver. “No, I never learned that. My father said he could send the thunder, but I didn’t see him do it.”

Sarapul grinned. “Ever eat a guy?”

Kimi shook his head. “No.”

“Tastes like Spam,” Sarapul said.

“I heard that.”

“I can teach you to send the thunder. I don’t know the stars, though.”

“I know the stars,” Kimi said.

“Go get your things,” Sarapul said.

The guards came for Tucker at sunset, just as he was slipping into the cotton pants and shirt the doctor had left for him. The doctor’s clothes were at least three sizes too big for him, but with the bandages he had to put them over, that was a blessing. He still had his own sneakers, which he put on his bare feet. He asked the guards to wait and they stood just inside his door, as straight and silent as terra-cotta soldiers.

“So, you guys speak English?”

The guards didn’t answer. They watched him.

“Japanese, huh? I’ve never been to Japan. I hear a Big Mac goes for twelve bucks.”

He waited for some response and got none. The Japanese stood impassive, silent, small beads of sweat shining through their crew cuts.

“Sorry, guys, I’d love to hang around with you chatterboxes, but I’m due for dinner with the doc and his wife.”

Tuck limped to the guards and offered each an arm in escort. “Shall we go?”

The guards turned and led him across the compound to one of the bungalows on the beach. The guards stopped at the steps of the lanai and Tuck dug into his pants pockets. “Sorry guys, no cash. Have the concierge put a couple of yen on my bill.”

The doctor came through the french doors in a white ice cream suit, carrying a tall iced drink garnished with mango. “Mr. Case, you’re looking much better. How are you feeling?”

“Nothing wrong with me one of those won’t cure.”

Sebastian Curtis frowned. “I’m afraid not. You shouldn’t drink alcohol with the antibiotics I have you on.”

Tucker felt his guts twist. “Just one won’t hurt, will it?”

“I’m afraid so. But I’ll make you one without alcohol. Come in. Beth is making a wonderful grouper in ginger sauce.”

Tucker went though the french doors to find a bungalow decorated much like his own, only larger. There was an open kitchen nook where Beth Curtis was stirring something with a wooden spoon. She looked up and smiled. “Mr. Case, just in time. I need someone to taste this sauce.” She was wearing a cream-colored Joan Crawford number with middle line-backer shoulder pads and buff-colored high heels. The dress was straight out of the forties, but Tuck had been around Mary Jean long enough to know that Mrs. Curtis had dropped at least five hundred bucks on the shoes. Evidently, missionary work paid pretty well.

She held a hand under Tuck’s chin as she presented the spoon. The sauce was sweet citrus with a piquant bite to it. “It’s good,” he said. “Really good.”

“No fibbing, Mr. Case. You’re going to have to eat it.”

“No, I like it.”

“Well, good. Dinner will be ready in about a half hour. Now, why don’t you men take your drinks out on the lanai and let a girl do her magic.”

Sebastian handed Tuck an icy glass filled with an orange liquid and garnished with mango. “Shall we?” he said, leading Tuck back outside.

They stood at the railing, looking out at the moon reflecting in the ocean.

“Would you be more comfortable sitting, Mr. Case?” the doctor asked.

“No, I’m fine. And please call me Tuck. Anyone calls me Mr. Case more than three times, I start thinking I’m going to get audited.”

The doctor laughed, “We can’t have that. Not with the kind of money you’re going to be making. But legally, you know, it’s tax-free until you take it back into the United States.”

Tuck stared out at the ocean for a moment, wondering whether it was time to give this gift horse a dental exam. There was just too damn much money showing on this island.

The equipment, the plane, Beth Curtis’s clothes. After Jake Skye’s lecture, Tuck had imagined that he might encounter some sweaty