He finished and straightened his thu, passed a thundering cannonade of gas, then went back to the sitting spot on the porch to get his cigarettes. The women had made a fire to boil water for coffee; the smoke from the burning coconut husks wafted out of the corrugated tin cookhouse and hung like blue fog under the canopy of breadfruit, mahogany, and palm trees.

Malink lit a cigarette and looked up to see the Sorcerer coming down the coral path, his white lab coat stark against the browns and greens of the village.

“Saswitch” (good morning), Malink said. The Sorcerer spoke their lan-guage.

“Saswitch, Malink,” the Sorcerer said. At the sound of his voice Malink’s wife and daughters ran out of the cookhouse and disappeared

down the paths of the village.

“Coffee?” Malink asked in English.

“No, Malink, there is no time today.”

Malink frowned. It was rude for anyone to turn down an offer of food or drink, even the Sorcerer. “We have little Tang. You want Tang? Spacemen drink it.”

The Sorcerer shook his head. “Malink, there was another man here with the pilot you found. I need to find him.”

Malink looked at the ground. “I no see any other man.” The Sorcerer didn’t seem angry, but just the same, Malink didn’t like lying to him. He didn’t want to anger Vincent.

“I won’t punish anyone if something happened to him, if he was hurt or drowned, but I need to know where he is. Vincent has asked me to find him, Malink.”

Malink could feel the Sorcerer staring a hole in the top of his head. “Maybe I see another man. I will ask at the men’s house today. What he look like?”

“You know what he looks like. I need to find him now. The Sky Priestess will give back the coffee and sugar if we can find him today.”

Malink stood. “Come, we find him.” He led the Sorcerer through the village, which appeared deserted except for a few chickens and dogs, but Malink could see eyes peeking out from the doorways. How would he ex-plain this when they asked why the Sorcerer had come? They passed out of the village, went past the abandoned church, the graveyard, where great slabs of coral rock kept the bodies from floating up through the soil during the rainy season, and down the overgrown path to Sarapul’s little house.

The old cannibal was sitting in his doorway sharpening his machete.

Malink turned to the Sorcerer and whispered, “He rude sometime. He very old. Don’t be mad.”

The Sorcerer nodded.

“Saswitch, Sarapul. The Sorcerer has come to see you.”

Sarapul looked up and glared at them. He had red chicken feathers stuck in his hair, two severed chicken feet hung from a cord above his head. “All the sorcerers are dead,” Sarapul said. “He is just a white doctor.”

Malink looked at the Sorcerer apologetically, then turned back to Sarapul. “He wants to see the man you found with the pilot.”

Sarapul ran his thumb over the edge of his machete. “I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he went swimming and a shark got him. Maybe someone eat him.”

Sebastian Curtis stepped forward. “He won’t be hurt,” he said. “We are going to send him out on the ship.”

“I want to go to the ship,” Sarapul said. “I want to buy things. Why can’t we go to the ship?”

“That’s not the issue here, old man. Vincent wants this man found. If he’s dead, I need to know.”

“Vincent is dead.”

The Sorcerer crouched down until he was eye-to-eye with the old cannibal. “You’ve seen the guards at the compound, Sarapul. If the man isn’t at the gate in an hour, I’m going to have the guards tear the island apart until they find him.”

Sarapul grinned. “The Japanese? Good. You send them here.” He swung his machete in front of the sorcerer’s face. “I have a present for them.”

Curtis stood. “An hour.” He turned and walked away.

Malink ambled along behind him. “Maybe he is right. Maybe the man drown or something.”

“Find him, Malink. I meant it about the guards. I want this man in an hour.”

“He is gone,” Sarapul said. “You can come out.”

Kimi dropped out of the rafters of Sarapul’s little house. “What is he talking about—guards?”

“Ha!” Sarapul said. “He knows nothing. He didn’t even know I had this.” Sarapul reached down and pulled out a headless chicken he had been sitting on. “He is no sorcerer.”

“He said there were guards.” Kimi said.

Sarapul laid his chicken on the ground. “If you are afraid, you should go.”

“I have to find Roberto.”

“Then let them send the guards,” Sarapul said, brandishing his machete. “They can die just like this chicken.”

Kimi stepped back from the old cannibal, who was on the verge of foaming at the mouth. “We friends, right?”

“Build a fire,” Sarapul said. “I want to eat my chicken.”

Jefferson Pardee was trying desperately not to look like a sea turtle. He’d managed to find the surface, catch his breath, and put his mask on. Blood from his nose was now swishing around inside it like brandy in a snifter. After locating the floating garbage bag that contained his clothes and propping it under his chest as a life preserver, his main focus was not to look like a turtle. To a shark living in the warm Pacific waters off Alualu, sea turtles were food. Not that there was any real danger of a shark making that particular mistake. Even a mentally challenged shark would figure out that sea turtles did not wear boxer shorts printed in flying piggies, and no turtles did not wear boxer shorts printed in flying piggies, and no turtle would be yattering streams of obscenities between chain-smoker gasps of breath. Still, a couple of harmless white-tipped reef sharks smelled blood in the water and cruised by to check out the source, only to retreat, regret-ting that in one hundred and twenty million years on the planet they had never evolved the equipment to laugh.

The surf was calm and the tide low, and considering Pardee’s buoyancy, the swim should have been easy. But when Pardee saw the two black shadows cruise by below him, his heart started playing a sternum-rattling drum solo that kept up until he barked his knees on the reef. An antler of coral caught the plastic bag, stopping Pardee’s progress long enough for him to notice that here on the reef the water was only two feet deep. He flipped over on his back, then sat on the coral, not really caring that it was cutting into his bottom. Waves lapped around him as he fought to catch his breath. He lifted his mask and let the blood run down his face and over his chest to expand into a rusty stain in the water. Tiny blue and yellow reef fish

rose around him looking for food and nipping at his skin, tickling him like teasing children.

He looked toward the beach, perhaps two hundred yards away. Inside the reef the danger of sharks was minimal—minimal enough that he would sit here and rest for a while. He watched the waves breaking softly around him, lapping against his back, and realized, with horror, that he was going to have to do this again in a few hours, against the waves and probably the tide. He’d have to find someone with a boat; that was all there was to it.

Ten minutes passed before his heart slowed down and he was able to steel his courage enough to swim the final leg. He picked out a stand of coconut palms above a small beach and slid across the reef toward the is-land. He kicked slowly, scanning the water around him for any sign of sharks. Except for a moment of temporary terror when a manta ray with a seven-foot wingspan flew out of the blue and passed below him, the swim to the beach was safe and easy. If manta rays are going to be harmless, they should look more harmless, Pardee thought. Fuckers look like aquatic Draculas.

He sat in the wash at the water’s edge and was tearing the tape that held the fins on his feet when he heard a sharp mechanical click behind him. He turned to see two men in black pointing Uzis at his head. Pardee grinned. “Konichi-wa,” he said. “You guys have a dry cigarette? I seem to have torn my garbage bag.”