Diane—the Western doctor, or nurse, as she insisted on calling herself—had hiked to Breaker Beach from some inland village to treat Tomas's slashed arm.

At first Turk was suspicious of her. In Equatoria, especially out here in the backwoods, nobody was checking anybody's medical license. At least that was the impression he got. If you owned a syringe and a bottle of distilled water you could call yourself a doctor, and the breaker bosses would naturally endorse any self-appointed physician who worked for free, regardless of results. So Turk sat with Tomas inside a vacant hut waiting for this woman to arrive, making occasional conversation until the older man fell asleep despite the blood still leaking into his makeshift bandage. The hut was made of some local wood, round barked branches knobbed like bamboo holding up a flat tin roof. It smelled of stale cooking and tobacco and human sweat. It was hot inside, though the screened door admitted an occasional slow sigh of air.

The sun was going down when the doctor finally walked up the plank steps to the platform floor, tugging aside a layer of bug netting.

She wore a tunic and loose pants of a cloth the color and texture of raw muslin. She wasn't a young woman. Far from it. Her hair was so white it seemed almost transparent. "Who's the patient?" she asked, squinting. "And light a lamp, please—I can hardly see."

"My name's Turk Findley," Turk said.

"Are you the patient?"

"No, I—"

"Show me the patient."

So he turned up the wick of an oil lamp and escorted her through another layer of netting to the yellowed mattress where Tomas slept. Out in the dusk, insect choruses were warming up. They sounded like no insects he had heard before, but you could tell that's what it was, that steely staccato buzzing. From the beach came the sound of hammering, the clatter of sheet metal, the chug and whine of diesel motors.

Tomas snored, oblivious. The doctor—Diane—looked at the bandage on his arm with an expression of contempt. "How did this happen?"

Turk told her how it had happened.

"So he sacrificed himself for you?"

"Sacrificed a chunk of his arm, anyhow."

"You're lucky to have a friend like that."

"Wake him up first. Then tell me whether I'm lucky."

She nudged Tomas's shoulder and Tomas opened his eyes and promptly cursed. Old curses, Creole curses, pungent as gumbo. He tried to sit up, then thought better of it. Finally he fixed his attention on Diane. "And who the fuck might you be?"

"I'm a nurse. Calm down. Who bandaged you?"

"Guy on the ship."

"He did a lousy job. Let me see."

"Well, I guess it was his first time. He— ow! Jesus! Turk, is this a real nurse?"

"Don't be an infant," Diane said. "And hold still. I can't help you if I can't see what's wrong." A pause.