My limbs are splayed and lie awry.

I spent the nights on my litter like an ox,

I wallowed in my excrement like a sheep

The exorcist shied away from my symptoms.

And the haruspex confused my omens.

Then he broke off, seeing the American watching him; then his eyes went wide at the sight of Prince Kashtiliash, and he made a prostration. His duck of the head to Clemens after he rose was no more than barely polite.

"Honored guest," he said coldly when he had arisen. His eyes traveled to Azzu-ena beside him; she was still in Babylonian dress. "Although this is scarcely the place to bring a harlot."

"This is my assistant," Clemens said, his voice equally chill. It was a natural enough assumption for a local to make of a woman unescorted in a war camp. Natural enough… once. "Azzu-ena daughter of Mutu-Hadki, asu of the king's household. We have come to see the men I set aside yesterday. The prince comes with me."

"I see." The priest's eyes were dark pools of bitterness. "It is not well that men should be denied care. But come; the king's word cannot be denied."

A dozen men had been laid off in one corner of the enclosure; Clemens had had a couple of Marines stationed there, along with the local orderlies he'd trained, to see that his instructions weren't disregarded as soon as he was out of sight. There were ten sick men there now.

"The other two?"

"Dead," the priest replied. "As might be expected, with the demons of their fevers allowed to rage unchecked."

An orderly lifted one of the men with an arm under his shoulders, keeping a glass at his lips until he had swallowed all of its contents; then he made a check mark beside a name on a list and went on to the next.

Clemens nodded. "And the twelve treated according to your custom?" he asked.

The priest shrugged. "The demons are strong. Seven have died, and the others weaken."

"Yes," Clemens said. "Of the twelve treated according to our… rites… ten live. Of those treated by yours, five live. In another day, these ten will be alive. How many of yours?"

The priest made as if to spit on the ground. "That means nothing! The demons-"

"The fever demons seem to fear our rituals more than your gods," Clemens said.

"Blasphemer!" the priest began.

Kashtiliash cut in: "Silence!"

The priest bowed his head. "I am more taken with deeds than words," the heir said bluntly. "A man who shits himself to death is as much lost to my host as a man with a spear through his belly. If you will not listen, another will. Go, and think on this."

To Clemens: "You spoke the truth, and you have shown it by your deeds. The decree shall be prepared."

Clemens and Azzu-ena bowed as Kashtiliash and his guardsmen left. When they had gone, she spoke.

"What causes this disease?" she said. The corpsmen lifted another man off his fouled pallet and replaced it with a fresh stretch of woven straw, cleaning him gently. "More of the bacteria!"

"Yes," he said. "But the actual cause of death is lack of water; too much runs out with the diarrhea and takes with it salts from the body."

"As if a man were to sweat in the sun of summer and not drink," Azzu-ena said thoughtfully. "Yes, that will bring on the fever and delirium, as well. Such a man will die."

"Very good!" Clemens said.

"So," she said, "the cure is to drink much water?"

"It isn't a cure," Clemens replied. "But it keeps him alive until his body can kill the agent of the disease naturally and then heal itself. It must be pure water-boiled or distilled-with salt and honey or sugar"-Akkadian had no word for that-"in certain exact proportions. These replace what the body has lost. We don't have enough antibiotics to treat so many men, but this will work. Especially if the treatment begins before the disease takes strong hold."

Azzu-ena nodded, her big-nosed face somber, hands folded in the sleeves of her robe. "From bad water?" she said softly. "That explains much; why you Nantukhtar so hate the touch of excrement… It was so my father died."

"Ah… I'm sorry."

She shook her head. "That does not matter. What matters is how we may treat these others." A toss of her head indicated the field of groaning victims. "The priest of Innana will not aid you, even if the prince commands-not willingly, and not quickly, and he will injure you by stealth if he may. I see it in his eyes."

"Right," Clemens said, frustration in his tone. He ran a hand through his short brown hair. "I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. There aren't enough medics or corpsmen with the regiment, or with the whole expedition. And I can't train them that fast…"

"You can train them for this one thing," Azzu-ena said, nodding her head toward the fire, where a huge pot of water boiled. "You cannot train them to care for the sick as well as you-we-would, but that is not essential here, no?"

"No," Clemens said. "What we need to do is stop this epidemic before it melts the army of Kar-Duniash like snow in Babylon."

"Then make up the medicine-water before, and have them boil it. Boiling water is not difficult. For the rest, nursing is what is required, no? Washing the men, keeping away flies…" She frowned. "For that, I think you should recruit among the women who follow the camp. They do much of the washing and repairing of clothing already."

Bright lady, Clemens thought. Very bright.

There were those, back on the Island, who said that it would have been better for the locals if Nantucket had stayed isolated, that every action would change the people whose lives they touched, and in ways beyond prediction or control.

"Yes, it will," Clemens murmured. "And I don't mind that at all."

Ranger Peter Girenas watched the sky, folding his arms behind his head and smiling at the clouds. The expedition was in what the maps said was central Missouri, but this place had never been mapped. He rested his head on a natural pillow of dropseed, the clump-grass that grows in the middle of the long swales of the tallgrass country. The grasses rustled and closed over his head, and he might have been alone save for Sue Chau sitting at his feet-looking, he thought, as pretty as the wildflowers as she sat in only her deerskin breechclout, combing her long black hair and chewing on a straw.

The dropseed beneath him was springy and firm, the intervals between the hassocks heavily matted with dried grass to make a perfect hammock. The soil beneath that was prairie loam that was like nothing he'd ever seen before-no clods or sticks or stones at all. He slitted his eyes and enjoyed the feel of the wind caressing his sweaty skin. A day like this, you could remember the crossing of the Ohio- the horse screaming as the raft overset, and the white water trying to topple it-without fear. Or the time they'd nearly lost Eddie to a cottonmouth bite, his body swelling, his mind raving, the two-week hiatus when they stopped to nurse him.

Long ago, now; it seemed long ago and far away. Now he could smell elk strips smoking over a slow green fire and the liver roasting for dinner. He saw dragonflies darting off below to the slough, a squadron of monarch butterflies flitting above the tall grass; he could hear a bobolink's bubbling song as it hung in the air twenty feet up, until that red-winged hawk silenced it by floating past far overhead. But the hawk was too high to be hunting, and too late to be migrating.

"Soaringjustforthe hell of it," Pete said. "He doesn't fool me. He looks busy, but he's loafing today, just like us."

High above the hawk were steady ranks of clouds, coasting on the westerly winds, dragging a shadow across the earth every now and then. He stood, only his head and shoulders above the grass, and watched the shadow cross the huge, rolling landscape, the grass rippling beneath it like waves on the sea.