Except to Tomas, who had briefly taken the full weight of the locker and whose left arm had been sliced open below the elbow, deep enough to show bone.

Tomas cradled the injury in his blood-soaked lap, looking startled. Turk applied a handkerchief as a tourniquet and told his friend to stop cursing and keep still while he went for help. It took him ten minutes to find an officer who would listen to him.

The ship's doctor had already gone ashore and the infirmary had been stripped of drugs, so Tomas had to be lowered from the deck in an improvised rope-and-basket litter with only a couple of aspirin to dull the pain. The Kestrel's captain, in the end, refused to admit liability, collected his pay from the breaker boss, and caught a bus for Port Magellan before sunset. So Turk was left to look after Tomas until an off-shift Malay welder could be convinced to summon a genuine doctor. Or what passed for a doctor in this part of the New World. A woman, the skinny Malay said in broken English. A good doctor, a Western doctor, very kind to the breakers. She was white but had lived for years in a Minang fishing village not far upcoast.

Her name, he said, was Diane.

CHAPTER SIX

Turk told Tomas Ginn about Lise—a little bit about her. How they had connected when they were stranded in the mountains; how he couldn't get her out of his mind even when they were back in civilization, even when she stopped returning his calls; how they got back together during the ashfall.

Tomas listened from his tattered easy chair, sipping beer from a green glass bottle and smiling placidly, as if he had discovered some kind of windless place inside his head. "Sounds like you hardly know this lady."

"I know as much as I need to. Some people, it isn't that hard to tell whether you trust them or not."

"Trust her, do you?"

"Yeah."

Tomas cupped the crotch of his baggy jeans. "This is what you trust. Every inch a sailor."

"It's not like that."

"It never is. But it always is. So why you want to drive up here and tell me about this woman?"

"Actually, I was thinking maybe I could introduce her to you."

"To me? I ain't your daddy, Turk."

"No, and you're not what you used to be, either."

"Don't see what that's got to do with it."

Turk had to tread carefully here. With the utmost delicacy, insofar as he was capable of it. "Well… she's curious about Fourths."

"Oh, my Christ." Tomas rolled his eyes. " Curious?"

"She's got reasons to be."

"So you want to serve me up to her? Exhibit A or whatever?"

"No. What I really want to do is let her talk to Diane. But I want your opinion first."

* * * * *