HE WAS IN AN airy suite at the Zone’s medical center, propped up and massaged by cooled shifting sheets and a powered mattress. A bright yellow spray of chrysanthemums sat on the console beside him, a gift Felipe had brought from one of the souks. The petals were already falling, but the scent was ripe, almost overpowering. The old priest had gone. But for the spectacle of the hopelessly optimistic spider that was attempting to draw its web between the serrated leaves, John would have called the machine that squatted in the corner and had the flowers removed.

The small screen on his lap was specially configured to respond to the wildly approximate movements of the glossy cocoons that still swathed his hands. He’d spent some time scrolling through the net’s great multilayered dictionary, from which his own translat’s data had come. There were so many words in so many languages for the word blue, and the word sky, but the best word—the nearest to the soft, short sound that he was almost sure the witchwoman who’d taken him to the Cresta Motel had uttered—came from the old English-American language that once dominated the world, the language from which much of both the Borderer and European languages were derived. Blue. A good word.

He pulled back from the database and paged down through the communications field of the local area of net, calling up the full address—28 All Saints Drive—now that he could get no response to the simple instruction to find Laurie Kalmar.

“Yeah?”

Broad cheeks and dark hair, a fleshy but handsome face. From the man’s expression, John guessed that even though the silver iris pigment had almost fully returned, and his eyes were no longer blue, he still looked iller and stranger than he thought. Or perhaps it was just the background that he hadn’t bothered to blank out. The humming sheets, the hospital smell.

“Have you been here long?”

“Here?” The man’s eyes darted up to the cursor to check who John was, then back again.

“I mean in the Zone.”

The man raised his shoulders in a lopsided shrug. “Just a few days, Father. I’m settling in. Why?”

“Do you know anything about the previous tenant? Where she went? Whether there’s still a port to access her anywhere?”

“Wait…” The man looked down, his hands rippling the screen. “No. I don’t think so. Not at this end.”

“Did you see her?”

The man shook his head.

“But I suppose the place must have needed a lot of clearing up,” John said. “All that dust, mess…Life…”

“Someone said she was a Borderer, so I guess. But look, Father, if there’s a problem, if you want to—”

“No. It’s okay,” John said, feeling white waves of tiredness begin to descend on him again. “It’s okay. And I hope you enjoy your time here.”

He faded the screen. When he looked up, he saw that Tim Purdoe was standing in the doorway.

The barrier flickered as Tim walked in and leaned down to inspect the monitor screens, hands on his knees, the sleeves riding up on his old tweed jacket and that ridiculous fringe of his thinning hair in need of a trim once more.

John said, “I couldn’t get Laurie.”

Tim sat down on the bed, his shoulders stiff and the steepled tips of his fingers whitening as he pressed them together.

“And you know, Tim, I really did think you were responsible for copying the cards about the leaf. I thought at first that it was Laurie, then I thought it was you. I never imagined that there was a port into the net at Kushiel.”

“Whoever closed up the plant probably thought they’d be coming back in a few weeks. Anyway, someone sent a veetol over. It’s been closed now.”

“What about the geothermal root? All that power in the ground?”

“There’s hardly any power in the ground, John.” Tim was looking down at the sheets now, holding himself oddly.

“I thought—”

“It wasn’t Kushiel that damaged you, John. Don’t you think they make you strong enough to stand a few electric shocks, a magnetic field? It was just some virus you picked up.” Tim glanced up at him, then down again. “Actually, it’s not quite like anything we’ve seen before, otherwise your recombinants would have dealt with it. But I did a search on the net, and there it was, not in the medical sectors at all but in the Magulf environmental stuff. A suggested code for the infection that might cause the, ah…disturbance of the witchwomen. I don’t suppose that their and our paths cross that often, which would explain…” Tim smiled briefly. “So it’s really a bit of a discovery, John. A new virus that could hurt us Europeans. But then that’s one of the main reasons we’re here, to catch anything bad before it reaches Europe. So we could both be minor celebrities for this, although I guess that’s not either of our styles.” Tim clenched and unclenched his hands. “Look, I—”

“And the leaf. You know, Tim, the leaf from Lall. I found out where the year’s crop went. It was Kassi Moss.”

Tim nodded. Even now, John thought, he’s not interested. But then his recollection of the times they talked before in this room was hazed by the drugs the doctor had pushed into him. Perhaps he’d said all this before.

“…and she uses the refined leaf on her patients, Tim, to kill them when there’s nothing else left that she can do. To bring an end. I remember how you said that if you distilled it and strung the molecules up, it would become a poison. And that’s what she was doing. She says she bought the Lall leaf because a witchwoman once told her it was close to a place of death. I guess Kassi’s a little mad herself, a little that way. But then, who isn’t?”

“Yes,” Tim said.

“But it’s not an answer.”

“Maybe not. But what is?”

“Kassi doesn’t need that much of the leaf. It’s become an obsession with her. But it’ll stop. And people are still dying, Tim. Even now, some of the polluted leaf is still reaching the streets. And there will be more of it in a few years, unless something is done.”

Tim nodded. “You know that place—the Cresta Motel. I should really call in there. See what I can…” As Tim looked out through the window at the green lawns, the racing skies, the ducks on the chilly, wind-ripped lake, John studied his profile, the way he was holding his mouth, wondering what was bothering him.

“About Agouna, Tim. I have no right to—”

“Look, John.” Tim turned back to him and placed his bare hands over the shiny lumps of John’s own. “I have some bad news about your family. It happened three days ago, but I’ve been holding it until I was sure you were mending. I hope you’ll forgive me. It had to happen soon anyway, and there was nothing you could have done.”

John stared at him, waiting.

“Your mother’s dead, John,” Tim said. “I’m terribly sorry.”