"Damn right. Let's stick to basics." Harry folded the book on his lap. "You're wondering about my health."

Arthur nodded. "Can you travel?"

"Not far, not soon. Yesterday they pumped me full of magic bullets. Bullets to restructure my immune system, to strengthen my bone marrow . . . Thousands of little tame retroviruses doing their thing. I feel like hell most of the time. Still, I've got what's left of my hair. We're not doing radiation or heavy chemicals yet."

"Can you work? Travel around California?"

"Anywhere you want me, within a two-hour emergency hop to UCLA Medical Center. I'm a wreck, Arthur. You shouldn't have chosen me. I shouldn't have agreed."

"You're still thinking clearly, aren't you?" Arthur asked.

"Yes."

"Then you're useful. Necessary."

Harry looked down at the folded book in his lap. "Ithaca's not taking this well."

"She seems cheerful."

"She's a good actress. At night, in her sleep, her face . . . she cries." Harry's own eyes were moist at the thought, and he seemed much younger, almost a boy, glancing up at Arthur. "Christ. I'm glad I'm the one who might die. If things were the other way around, and she was going through this, I'd be in worse shape than I am now."

"You're not going to die," Arthur said sternly. "We're almost into the twenty-first century. Leukemia isn't the killer it used to be."

"Not for children, Arthur. But for me . . ."He raised his hands.

"You leave us, and I'm going to be pretty damn inconsolable." Completely against his will, he felt his own eyes grow damp. "Remember that."

Harry said nothing for a moment. "The Forge of God," he finally commented, shaking his head. "If that ever gets into the papers ..."

"One nightmare at a time," Arthur said. Harry called Ithaca to prepare a guest bedroom for Arthur. As she did that, Arthur placed a collect call to Oregon, the first he had had a chance to make in two days.

His conversation with Francine was brief. There was nothing he could tell her, except that he was well. She was polite enough, and knew him well enough, not to mention the news reports.

The call was not enough. When it was over, Arthur missed his family more than ever.

Chapter 24

24

October 20, Australia (October 19, OSA)

A newsreel preceded the feature film on the Qantas flight to Melbourne, projected over the heads of passengers onto a tiny screen. Arthur looked up from his disk reader and open ring binder. Beside him, an elderly gentleman in a gray herringbone wool suit dozed lightly.