The guards scuffled for a moment, not sure whether to disarm their companion or shove their clips home and begin the massacre. Above the crying, the scuffle, the snickering, and the tintinnabulation of residual gunfire, a girl giggled. The guards looked up. Sepie stood in the doorway of the bachelors’ house, naked but for a pair of panties she’d recently ac-quired from a transvestite navigator. “Hey, sailors,” she said, trying out a phrase she’d also acquired from Kimi, “you want a date?” The guards didn’t understand the words, but they got the message.

“Go inside, girl,” Malink scolded. Women, even the mispel, were not permitted to show their thighs in public. Not even when swimming, not when bathing, not when crapping on the beach, not ever.

“Go back inside,” Favo said. “When they go away, you will be beaten.”

“I have been beaten before,” Sepie said. “Now I will be rich.”

“Tell her,” Favo said to Malink.

Malink shrugged. His authority as chief worked only as long as his people willingly obeyed him. The key to retaining their respect was to find out what they wanted to do, then tell them to do it. He levied the most severe punishment he knew. “Sepie, you may not touch the sea for ten days.”

She turned and wiggled her bottom at him, then disappeared into the bachelors’ house. The stunned guards ceased their scuffle and moved tentatively toward the doorway, looking to each other for permission.

“This is your fault,” Malink said to Favo. “You shouldn’t have started giving her things.”

“I didn’t give her things,” Favo said.

“You gave her things for”—and here Malink paused, trying to catch himself before losing a friend—“for doing favors for you.”

Jefferson Pardee sat on a metal office chair in the corner of a windowless cinder-block room. The guard stood by the metal door, his machine gun trained on Pardee’s hairy chest. The reporter was trying to affect an attitude of innocence tempered with a little righteous indignation, but, in fact, he was terrified. He could feel his heartbeat climbing into his throat and sweat rolled down his back in icy streams. He’d given up on trying to talk to the guards; they either didn’t speak English or were pretending they didn’t.

He heard the throw of the heavy bolt on the door and expected the other guard to return, but instead a woman wearing surgical garb entered the room. Her eyes were the same color as the surgical blues and even in the oppressive heat she looked chilly.

“At last,” Pardee said. “There’s been some kind of mistake here.” He offered his hand, trying not to show how unsteady he was, and the guard threatened him with the Uzi. “I’m Jefferson Pardee from the Truk Star.”

She nodded to the guard and he left the room. Her voice was friendly, but she wasn’t smiling.

“I’m Beth Curtis. My husband runs the mission clinic on this island.” She didn’t offer her hand. “I’m sorry you’ve been treated this way, Mr. Pardee, but this island is under quarantine. We’ve tried to limit the contact with the outside until we have a better handle on this epidemic.”

“What epidemic? I haven’t heard anything about this?”

“Encephalitis. It’s a rare strain, airborne and very contagious. We don’t let anyone off island who’s been exposed.”

Jefferson Pardee exhaled a deep sigh of relief. So this was the big story. Of course he’d promise not to say a word, but Time magazine would kill for this. He’d leave out the part about being taken prisoner in his flying piggy boxers. “And the guards?”

“World Health Organization. They’ve also given us an aircraft and lab equipment, as I’m sure you’ve seen.”

He’d seen an awful lot of lab equipment as he was led through the little hospital, but the aircraft was still a rumor. He decided to go for the facts. “You have a new Learjet, is that correct?”

“Yes.” She seemed genuinely taken aback by his comment. “How did you know?”

“I have my sources,” Pardee said, wishing he wore glasses so he could take them off in a meaningful way.

“I’m sure you do. Information is like a virus sometimes, and the only way to find a cure is to trace it to the source. Who told you about the jet?”

Pardee wasn’t giving anything for free. “How long have you known about the encephalitis?”

For the first time Pardee noticed that Beth Curtis had been holding her right hand behind her back the entire time they had been talking. He noticed because when the hand appeared, it was holding a syringe. “Mr. Pardee, this syringe contains a vaccine that my husband and I have developed with the help of the World Health Organization. Because you took it on yourself to sneak onto Alualu, you have exposed yourself to a deadly virus that at-tacks the nervous system. The vaccine seems to work even after exposure to the disease, but only if administered in the first few hours. I want to give you this vaccine, I really do. But if you insist on drawing out this little game of liar’s poker, then I can’t guarantee that you won’t contract the disease and die a horrible and painful death. So, that said, who told you about the jet?”

Pardee felt the sweat rising again. She hadn’t raised her voice, there wasn’t even a detectable note of anger there, but he felt as if she was holding a knife to his throat. Okay, to hell with the adventurous journalist. He could still get a byline based on what she’d already told him. “I talked to a pilot who passed through Truk a few months ago.”

“A few months ago? Not more recently?”

“No. He said he was going to fly a jet for some missionaries on Alualu. I came out to check it out.”

“And that was all you heard? Just that we had a jet?”

“Yes, it’s pretty unusual for a missionary clinic to have money for a jet, wouldn’t you say?”

She smiled. “I guess it is. So how did you plan to get off the island after you got your story?”

“The Micro Spirit was going to pick me up on the other side of the island. That’s it. I was just curious. It’s an occupational hazard.”

“Who knows you’re here, besides the crew of the Spirit?”

Pardee considered her question; what would be the best answer. Surely she wouldn’t let him die of some dreaded disease, but how stupid would he have been to come out here without telling anyone? “The people who work for me at the Star and a friend of mine at AP who I called for some background before I left.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she said, still smiling. Pardee couldn’t help but feel pleased with himself. It had been a long time since he’d gotten any approval—or attention for that matter—from a beautiful woman.

She uncapped the syringe. “Now, before I give you the vaccine, a few medical questions, okay?”

“Sure. Shoot.”

“You smoke and drink to excess, correct?”

“I indulge from time to time. Another occupational hazard.”

“I see,” she said. “And have you ever had a test for HIV?”

“A month ago. Clean as a whistle.” This was true. He’d been motivated to take the test by a creepy rash on his stomach that turned out to be caused by skin-burrowing mites. The medic with the Navy CAT team had given him an ointment that cleared it up in a few days.

“Have you ever had hepatitis, cancer, or kidney disease?”

“Nope.”

“How about your family? Anyone with a history of kidney disease or cancer?”

“Not last time I heard. I haven’t talked with my family in twenty-five years.”

She seemed especially pleased at that. “And you’re not married? No children?”

“No.”

“Very good,” she said. She plunged the needle into his shoulder and pushed the plunger.

“Ouch. Hey, you could have warned me. Aren’t you supposed to swab that with alcohol first or something?”

She stepped to the door and smiled again. “I don’t think infec tion is going to be a problem, Mr. Pardee. Now don’t panic, but in a minute or so you are going to go to sleep. I can’t believe you bought that bit about the encephalitis. People get stupid living in the tropics, don’t you think?”