The Babylonian was taking notes, too, preparing a handbook in her native tongue-diagnosis and treatment of the most common ills, especially the ones that could be handled with local resources.

"What treatment?" she said.

"Well, penicillin, if we had enough," he said, which they didn't. "Antiseptic drops are the alternative."

He told the mother, and she gripped the boy child's head and tilted it back despite his squalls. Damn, have to get deloused again after this, Clemens thought, looking at the tousled black hair.

"Do you see what I do?" he asked the woman. She was thin, dark, looked about fifty and was probably in her third decade, with a weaver's calloused hands.

"Yes, great one."

He ran the dipper into the bottle, sealing the top with his index finger. Both were plain clay; if you handed out glass ones the recipients would sell them-food came first, and glass was an expensive rarity here. The solution inside was their all-purpose disinfectant, and it stung. The toddler wailed and struggled, but his mother gave him a tremulous smile. Good teeth, at least, Clemens thought abstractedly. Most people here did have them, at least until middle age; no sugars in the diet.

"Three times each day," Clemens said. "If you do this faithfully, it will be cured. Bring the child back to me when the medicine is gone. Do you understand?"

"Yes, holy one," the woman said, and suddenly she gripped his hand and kissed it; her own eyes filled and tears ran down her cheeks. "Thank you for saving my son's sight, holy one! He is our last child left alive, now he may live and father children of his own! Thank you-I have little, but what I have is yours."

"Go, go," Clemens said roughly, embarrassed. He went over to the table he'd set up and scrubbed his hands again. I'm going to wear my skin off in this filthy country, he thought.

"Lord," the palace usher said, looking about him with contempt. "You will miss the ceremony!"

"Just one more," he said. "Then we'll clean up and go."

It was another child, although barely so by local standards, a girl of twelve or thirteen. To Island-raised eyes she would have passed for nine-barefoot, dressed in a ragged gray shift with a shawl over her braids.

"What is the child's illness?" he asked the mother. Another skinny underfed weaver.

"A demon of fever, holy one," the woman said, bringing her shawl up under her chin in modesty; an upper-class woman might have covered her mouth as well. "For a night and a day now. She cannot eat the good bread."

Fever. Well, that was the all-purpose term here. He wiped down a thermometer and stuck it in the girl's mouth.

"Don't bite; just hold that under your ton-"

A desperate grab saved the instrument, and he looked into the hazed, defiant black eyes. Her mother raised a hand, but stopped at a gesture.

"Here is a date stuffed with pistachios," Clemens said. That was a treat rare enough to tempt someone with no appetite. "If you hold this thing in your mouth as I say, you may have it."

The girl considered, then nodded.

"Give me the date," she said.

"Here. But don't eat it yet."

This time the thermometer stayed in. Clemens got out his stethoscope and the blood-pressure apparatus and began his examination, throwing comments over his shoulder to Azzu-ena as she handed him the equipment he required.

Hmmm. A hundred and one degrees-no wonder she's cranky and off her feed, he thought. Let's see… There were so many diseases here, and many of them were just that-diseases, with no names in the books he'd studied.

Azzu-ena was craning over his shoulder. "That looks like a rash," she said. "Reddish patch."

"Mmmm-hmmmm." He pulled up the girl's shift; she pulled it down again and slapped his hand. Clemens sighed. "I am a physician. Eat your date."

More of the red patches, with little flecks of dried blood, as from a fleabite…

Clemens felt the color leave his face; for a moment the room swam, and he made a choked noise. Azzu-enu stepped forward, alarmed.

"No!" he said, his voice crisp. "Get back-don't touch me, don't touch her. Get into the other room." She hesitated, looking at him with astonishment. "Go!" She fled.

"You," he said to the usher. "Fetch soldiers. Have this part of the palace sealed-completely sealed, no one to enter or leave. Go, do it, then come back here." The usher drew himself up, tapping his staff.

Clemens caught his eye and spoke, his words slow and cold. "I am the one who saved the king's favorite. If you do not obey me in every particular, man of Kar-Duniash, the king will have you impaled. Do you understand me? For I speak the truth and I do not lie."

The usher's olive face went pasty; he backed away, bowing, hand before his mouth in the gesture of submission.

"What is it?" Azzu-ena called sharply through the door of the room that held the autoclave.

"Possibly the end of the world," Clemens said, his mind racing.

The dirigible's at Ur Base, he thought. They can get here by tomorrow morning. All right, that's five hundred doses. Maybe, oh, God, maybe-

He turned to the woman, kept his voice gentle as he looked into the enormous dark pools of fear that were her eyes. "Who is your man?" he said quietly. "How many other children do you have, and where do they dwell?"

"Ahhhh," Kathryn Hollard said, sinking into the tub until only her nose was above water, scratching vigorously at her scalp and the short-cropped sandy hair, reveling in the animal comfort.

Her quarters in the section of the palace turned over to the Americans weren't large, but they did run to the Babylonian equivalent of a bathroom; a big ceramic tub, with a drainpipe and a brazier in a corner to heat water. Sin-ina-mati had managed to wangle an appointment as her batman and had the whole thing ready for her, for which she was profoundly grateful. It was amazing how you could soak up dirt and dust and sand, and even if you kept your scalp stubbled and shaved everything else, the war against lice and fleas was never completely won. Still, she moved the gently exploring hand aside.

"Not now, Mattie," she said. "Not in the mood."

Sin-ina-mati pouted slightly and then grinned and tossed her the sponge.

"Ah, the handsome Prince Kashtiliash fills your thoughts," she said. "And you wish he would fill your-ai!"

Laughing, Kathryn held up her hand, ready to scoop more of the water at her. "Common knowledge now, is it?" she said, as Sin-ina-mati pretended to cower, laughing herself. "Hell, you can still scrub my back, Mattie."

"Not very common, but there's little secret here in the palace," the Babylonian woman said, bringing up a stool and sitting on it to use the sponge. "And I hear everything there is to hear."

"Happy to be back?" Kathryn said, taking the sponge before slipping down to soak again. She dropped back into English for an instant: "Christ on a crutch, this country is parasite heaven. "

"I am happy to be back as a free woman, with silver of my own," Sin-ina-mati said. Serious for a moment: "I have paid my family's debts, and soon they will buy back their land that now they rent. Several families have asked me to tutor their children in the Nantukhtar letters, with generous fees. Thank you."

Kathryn nodded, slightly embarrassed. That was how the girl had ended up as a palace slave in the first place. Her peasant family had sold her off as the only alternative to starving for the whole bunch, from grandmother to nursing infants. That could happen here, if you were up against it, borrowed against the next harvest, and got seriously unlucky.

The gratitude made her uneasy, though. Sin-ina-mati's new status wasn't her doing; it was the Republic's policy. On the other hand, she'd learned firsthand that Babylonians didn't think that way. Everything was personal obligation or enmity to them, not personified abstractions like nations or governments. And she had gotten her a better job than carrying bedpans.