A woman's face was revealed, gaunt and bloodless. An india.

'For Christ's sake,' Bobby said, hoarsely. 'How many more have you got in there?'

'Three and some organs. What's it got to do with you?' Cruz said, in Spanish, forgetting he was not meant to understand English.

'There is no room at the hospital morgue,' Carriscant explained. 'Most surgeons have to store cadavers in their own premises.'

'But why?' Bobby said. 'Why not bury them?'

'For the advancement of medical science,' Carriscant said reasonably. 'How else do you think we are able to do so much? To cure, to heal?'

'Precisamente,' Cruz agreed, nodding his big head.

Carriscant watched Bobby's glance flit between the two of them, he could see he was troubled and unsettled.

'It's a common practice,' Carriscant said, gently, a little unhappy to find himself siding with Cruz, 'and essential.'

Cruz stepped away from them and pumped some gusts of carbolic spray into the atmosphere. Bobby gathered himself and had Carriscant explain to Cruz that Ephraim Ward's body was to be returned to the San Jeronimo morgue immediately. Cruz refused to do anything without the authority of Governor Taft. Bobby said he would provide him with that forthwith.

'That man is a monster,' Bobby said, passionately, as they drove away from Cruz's house. 'Those poor fucking dogs and monkeys. The bodies stacked up in the next room… It's not natural.'

'Always remember,' Carriscant said. 'He is a peninsularo. They assume the world is organised for them. In Filipinas they decide what is normal. Or at least they used to for three hundred years. It's hard for them to adjust.'

Bobby disagreed, but Carriscant was not really listening. He pursed his lips, frowning. He was thinking: those dogs… Two animals, one heart. What was the old fool trying to do?

Pantaleon spread the plans flat on the ground in front of the nipa barn and weighted the corners with stones. Carriscant squatted down on his haunches in front of them and made suitable noises of appreciation.

'The Aero-mobile,' he read. 'Good name.'

'I thought: you've got an automobile, what better description for a flying machine?'

'Sounds ideal.'

Carriscant scrutinised the fine drawings. What he saw looked like a cross between a cantilevered bridge and a stylised bird. There were two wrings, boxy with many struts and wires, but the tail at the end was curved and semicircular, with flutings, like the fanned tail of a dove, displaying. He found Pantaleon's dream of powered heavier-than-air flight touching, a harmless obsession, but he sensed his natural curiosity about the project growing, despite his scepticism, and despite the fact he had only invited himself here on a pretext.

'It's a competition,' Pantaleon said, explaining. 'Two businessmen, an American and a Frenchman, have set up this prize, the Amberway-Richault prize. They've offered ten thousand dollars for the first flying machine to lift itself off the ground under its own power and fly for one hundred metres. Under its own power, no ramps, pulleys, gradients. It must be fully authenticated, of course.'

'And you think this… this "Aero-mobile" can do it?'

'In principle, I'm sure,' Pantaleon said, with quiet authority. 'There are a few problems… Engine power is the major one, of course. But I'm on the right lines. The glider models have worked very satisfactorily.' He smiled shyly, confessing. 'It's what I've been up to this last year.'

'Most impressive,' Carriscant said. 'Well, I really must be-'

'Fortunately for me,' Pantaleon lowered his voice, even though they were quite alone in his meadow, 'even though I hate to admit it, the arrival of the Americans has made everything so much easier. They're at the forefront, you see. Them and the French.' He looked about him, a small expression of contempt on his face. 'We were rotting out here,' he said, 'in every way. Nothing had really changed since the eighteenth century, when you think about it. Nothing.'

'Yes. Yes, you're right,' Carriscant said, suddenly caught with some of Pantaleon's passion. 'Look at us, at our own discipline. We had to leave, go abroad, to discover what astonishing progress was being made. Yet we still have to deal with old quacks like Cruz and Wieland.'

'Can you imagine,' Pantaleon said dreamily, not really listening, 'if I, Pantaleon Quiroga, were the first man to achieve powered flight. Here, in the Philippines…

'You know that Cruz has kept the American's heart and his liver,' Carriscant said, darkly. 'Can you believe the arrogance? Bobby has protested again to Taft.'

'The twentieth century… How incredible to be living now. Everything will change, Salvador, everything.'

The two men fell silent, preoccupied with their own thoughts, as the evening light gathered around them in the blond windcombed meadow, peachy and warm, and across the river came the sound of the Angelus tolling mournfully. Carriscant clapped his young friend on the shoulder.

'It's good to talk to you, Pantaleon,' he said sincerely. 'It's good for me, anyway. Gets my mind off… things.' He gazed back at the meaningless mass of struts and wires in the nipa barn. 'I'm mightily impressed with your machine, your Aero-mobile. Let me know if I can help, in any way.'

'Actually, you might be able to, Salvador. Do you want to go for a beer?'

'Another time, my friend. I have to get back.'

Carriscant left Pantaleon at his barn as he said he was about to start fixing the fabric to the wings and intended to work into the night. He retraced his steps to Santa Cruz and picked up a carromato that took him the short distance to Sampaloc.

Sampaloc was little better than a slum, one level up, perhaps, from the squalor that was Tondo, but all the same it presented to the eye a mean scatter of wooden shacks with galvanised iron roofs and unpaved narrow lanes noisome with filth and sewage. Gardenia Street was its one mark of distinction, a short cobbled avenue of shops that had been converted into makeshift bars and cafes. These establishments still retained the canvas awnings of the old shopfronts, great skirts of material that projected out from the facade on a metal beam and then hung almost to the ground, designed to produce maximum shade. The effect was to curtain-off the interior from the casual passerby but one could see and hear, in the gaps between the shopfronts, the glow of coloured lights, the sound of music and the laughter and noise of men's voices. This partial shrouding was more enticing, Carriscant found, than any overt display of licence.

He sat in a small bodegon on the outskirts of Sampaloc reading a newspaper and drinking many cups of coffee until the gathering darkness outside necessitated the lighting of the oil lamps. Once he felt he could venture out with some hope of maintaining his anonymity he set off down Gardenia Street. It was busy with men, American soldiers and sailors, and the air was loud with English voices, a disorientating and unsettling experience for him. He realised that he had not heard so many English voices since he had boarded his ship at Liverpool for his trip home in 1897. As he wandered up and down the length of Gardenia Street he felt a sudden clutch of melancholy seize him as he mentally contemplated his younger self all those years ago. He remembered his rapt astonishment as he walked the streets of Glasgow at the commencement of his medical studies. How he would take the horse tram from Gilmorehill, with the new university on its crest and the Infirmary at its foot where he worked and studied, and travel into the centre of town. All these people in their heavy dark clothes. He would walk about the thronged streets dazed with the noise of the traffic and the gabble and blather of English in his ears. Paving underfoot, every square yard, hard stone. The iron wheelrims of the trams and the cabs and the drays clattering and ringing. Writing everywhere, names and advertisements on every vertical surface, it seemed. In one shop a window filled with 200 straw hats. It seemed to bring a presentiment of sun, of the tropics, to this solid square city, with its tall, ornate, sootblack buildings, muscly with commerce and civic pride.