“No, thanks.”

Freeboot’s eyes flared again with quick anger.

“You don’t seem to understand, man,” he said. “You’re our guest.”

He stalked to the rough wooden table and picked up a small bottle by the neck, upending it and taking a long swig. The liquor was clear but oily, with something thick and pinkish bobbing inside it. When he set it down, Monks glimpsed the label: Mezcal con Gusano Monte Alban. It was mescal, the real thing, and the “something” was an agave worm.

He also noticed that the fingertips of Freeboot’s hands were scarred into thick lumps of callus-maybe a childhood injury from touching something hot.

A quick series of beeps sounded across the room. Monks realized that they came from the belt radio that Hammerhead wore. They seemed to have a cadence, like a code.

Hammerhead pulled the radio free and spoke into it. “Brother, this is Site Three. Over.”

A man’s voice spoke, backed by faint static. “Brother, this is Captain America, requesting permission to enter. Over.”

Hammerhead hesitated, his gaze flicking toward the bedroom, where Marguerite was still with Mandrake.

“What’s your position, Captain America?” Hammerhead barked. “Over.”

“I’m right outside, man.” Even with the static, Captain America sounded annoyed.

Hammerhead looked questioningly at Taxman. Taxman nodded.

With obvious reluctance, Hammerhead said, “Permission granted.”

The lodge door opened. Another man stepped inside. He was about thirty, tall and good-looking, with wavy blond hair and an air of assurance. He carried an AK-47 or similar-type assault rifle with a large night-vision scope.

He stepped to attention, facing Taxman, and raised the rifle to port arms, extending it forward as if he were offering it.

“Take this, brother, may it serve you well,” he intoned. “Security was turned over to command of Sidewinder at ohone-hundred hours.”

Taxman acknowledged this, with a slight lifting of his chin.

Captain America relaxed, slinging the rifle over his shoulder, muzzle down, and glancing at Monks incuriously.

“So, Marguerite’s back?” he asked, looking around.

“We put in a long day, man,” Hammerhead said immediately, with a trace of belligerence. “She needs to rest.”

Freeboot swung toward Hammerhead with the riveting gaze that Monks was starting to think of as “the stare.”

“You don’t talk like that to a made maquis, HH,” Freeboot said. His tone was harsh with warning.

“I’m the one who was on the mission with her,” Hammerhead said sullenly, but his eyes shifted away.

“You’re a fucking grunt. You don’t touch the brides. Maybe you’ll make maquis someday, and maybe you won’t.”

Then Taxman said, “You seem to be developing a little attitude problem, HH. Guess we’ll have to work on that.”

Under the hard stares of both men, Hammerhead deflated into fidgeting. Captain America watched, with the air of a seasoned gunfighter irritated by an upstart punk.

“Marguerite needs to help out here another couple of minutes,” Freeboot told him. “She’ll be ready after that.”

Captain America sauntered to the table and twisted the top off a bottle of Red Hook ale.

Monks glimpsed his fingertips. They were thick with callus, like Freeboot’s.

Monks scanned the other men’s hands covertly. They were the same.

That could not be accidental.

The fingerprints had been deliberately obliterated, by burning, cutting, or chemicals.

The blanket in the bedroom doorway shifted aside and Marguerite came out, holding a chipped white enamel mug. The room became still again as she carried it to Monks. He took it from her and knelt beside a lantern so that he could get a good look. The urine was pale yellow and had the same unpleasant fruity smell as the child’s breath.

But with no technological means to measure the blood sugar, there was only one way, the way the old-timers had done it. He dipped his index finger into the cup, then put the finger in his mouth. He waited until the taste was gone, then did it a second time.

There was no doubt. Along with the sour taste of the urine itself, there was a cloying sweetness. It was saturated with sugar.

Monks got to his feet. All attention was focused on him.

“Diabetes mellitus,” Monks said. “Judging from the other symptoms, it’s very advanced. If it’s not treated, it will kill him. Soon.”

Freeboot erupted from his tense, staring pose in a convulsive jerk, his hands rising from his sides as if he was ready to fight.

“How the fuck can you tell that?” His voice shook with rage that seemed far out of proportion.

“It’s sweet,” Monks said. “His blood sugar’s out of control. Go ahead, taste it. Then taste your own. You’ll tell the difference.” He offered Freeboot the cup.

Freeboot strode to him and yanked it away, hoisting it to his mouth as if he was going to down the urine in a single gulp. But the cup hovered at his lips, untasted, for several seconds.

Then Freeboot spun away and slung it into the fireplace. The cup clanged against the stones, the urine spraying into the flames.

“There is nothing. Wrong. With my son!” he roared.

His back remained turned to the room, and Monks had the queasy sense of having offended a primitive, egomaniacal tribal ruler, who next would whirl back and order the death of the messenger bearing bad news.

But when Freeboot turned around again, his face had become an almost mimelike mask of calmness.

“Diabetes,” he said. “There’s a medicine for that, right?”

“Insulin.”

“All right, we’ll get some, and you give it to him.”

“Whoa, wait,” Monks said. “First off, it’s a very complicated procedure. You need a precise way to determine dosages and measure blood sugar. Second, a few shots of insulin are not going to make that kid well. He needs major treatment on several levels, and follow-up treatment for the rest of his life.”

“I’m talking about right now. We get him feeling better, who knows? That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

Monks’s outrage leaped again at the thought that a life-threatening illness might make a four-year-old child stronger.

“It is going to kill him!” he finally exploded. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” He stepped closer to Freeboot, holding his gaze, trying to make contact with the father who had to be in there somewhere.

Freeboot seemed unperturbed. “Let me think it over.”

“There’s nothing to think over,” Monks said. “He needs to get to a hospital, now.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“What would I have to gain by lying?”

“Maybe you’re trying to fuck with our heads.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Monks turned away in disgust.

“So, we’ll just try some of that insulin for a few days,” Freeboot said. “If it helps, maybe I’ll start listening to you.”

He turned his gaze on the others, imperious now, and spoke with the clipped efficiency of having made a decision.

“Taxman, Shrinkwrap, we’ve got to talk. You”-he pointed at Captain America -“take your bride. Hammerhead, you stay here.”

Marguerite flashed a bruised glance at Freeboot, then stepped out into the night. Captain America followed, closing the door behind them.

Hammerhead watched them with flat, unblinking eyes.

Freeboot swung to face Monks. “You go on back with Mandrake.”

There was no point in arguing further. Monks did as he was told.

When he stepped into the bedroom, Motherlode was sitting on the edge of Mandrake’s bed, petting him and whispering to him-finally acting like a mother, if a stoned and disheveled one. She was wearing a rumpled flannel nightgown, her breasts loose and sagging beneath it.

“Is he going to get better?” she asked Monks.

“If we get him proper treatment, he will,” Monks said, making another bid for an ally.

“That’s why I wanted a doctor.”

That’s not enough, Monks was about to say, but it was another pointless argument. Whether Freeboot had ground her down to this state or she had found her own way to it, there was no help here. On the one hand, it was hard to feel sympathy for a mother who could fall into a self-induced stupor beside her sick child. On the other, Monks pitied anyone that desperate. She seemed bewildered, more than anything-incapable of dealing with this crisis.