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the other children at his rear, giggling, and formally shook Donnell's hand. 'Wanna thank you,' he muttered; he cast a defiant look at his brothers and sisters, as if something had been proved. The toddler leaned on Donnell's knee and plucked off his sunglasses. 'Ap,' she said, pointing at his eyes, chortling. 'Ap azoo.'

Robichaux was buttoning his shirt when Donnell entered. He frowned and looked away and once again thanked him. But this time his thanks were less fervent and had a contractual ring. 'If I'm down to my last dollar,' he said sternly, 'that dollar she's yours.'

Donnell shrugged; he squinted at Robichaux's field. 'Have you seen a doctor?'

'Don't need no doctor to tell me I'm cured,' said Robichaux. He peered down inside his shirt. The web of broken capillaries rose to the base of this neck. 'Don't know why you had to do this mess. Worse than a goddamn tattoo.'

'Trial and error,' said Donnell without sympathy. It had come as a shock to him that he did not like Mr Robichaux; that - by gaining ten pounds and a measure of vigor - the characterless thing he had first treated had evolved into a contemptible human being, one capable of viciousness. He suspected the children might have been better off had their father's disease been allowed to run its course.

'It ain't that I ain't grateful, you understand,' Robichaux said, fawning, somewhat afraid. 'It's just I don't know if all this here's right, you know. I mean you ain't no man of God.'

Donnell wondered about that; he was, after all, full of holy purpose. For a while he had thought healing might satisfy his sense of duty unfulfilled, but he had only been distracted by the healing from a deeper preoccupation. He felt distaste for this cringing, devious creature he had saved.

'No, I'm not,' he said venomously. 'But neither are you, Mr Robichaux. And that little devil's web on your chest might just be an omen of worse to come.'

'... Since the great looping branches never grew or varied, since the pale purple sun never fully rose or set, the shadow of Moselantja was a proven quantity upon the grassy plain below. Men and beasts lived in the shadow, as well as things which otherwise might not have lived at all, their dull energies supplied, some said, by the same lightless vibrations that had produced this enormous growth, sundered the mountain and sent it bursting forth. From the high turrets one could see the torchlit caravans moving inward along the dark avenues of its shadow toward the main stem, coming to enlist, or to try their luck at enlistment, for of the hundreds arriving each day, less than a handful would survive the rigors of induction...'

'What do you think?' asked Donnell.

Jocundra did not care for it, but saw no reason to tell him. 'It's strange,' she said, giving a dramatic shudder and grinning. She emptied the vase water out the window, then skipped back across the room and burrowed under the covers with him. Her skin was goose-pimpled. It had been warm and dead-still the night before, but the air had cooled and dark, silver-edged clouds were piling up. Sure signs of a gale. A damp wind rattled the shutters.

'It's just background,' said Donnell petulantly. 'It has to be strange because the story's very simple. Boy meets girl, they do what comes naturally, boy joins army, loses girl. Years later he finds her. She's been in the army, too. Then they develop a powerful but rather cold relationship, like a hawk and a tiger.'

'Read some more,' she said, pleased that he was writing a love story, even if such an odd one.

'War is the obsession of Moselantja, its sole concern, its commerce, its religion, its delight. War is generally held to be the purest natural expression of the soul, an ecological tool designed to cultivate the species, and the cadres of the Yoalo, who inhabit the turrets of Moselantja, are considered its prize bloom. Even among those they savage, they are revered, partially because they are no less hard on themselves than on those they subjugate. As their recruits progress upward toward the turrets, the tests and lessons become more difficult. Combat, ambush, the mastery of the black suits of synchronous energy. Failure, no matter how slight, is not tolerated and has but one punishment. Each day's crop of failures is taken to the high turret of Ghazes from which long nooses and ropes are suspended. The nooses are designed