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dry, almost weightless, but his pulse surged. 'I commiserate,' he said. 'I know what it is to be alone.' He withdrew his hand and nodded absently. 'Rigmor, my great-grandmother, used to tell me that America was a land where no one ever need be alone. Said she'd had that realization when she stepped off the boat from Sweden and saw the mob thronging the docks. Of course she had no idea to what ends the Twentieth Century would come, the kinds of shallow relationships that would evolve as the family was annihilated by television, automobiles, the entire technological epidemic. She had her vision of families perched on packing crates. Irish, Poles, Italians, Arabs. Plump girls with dark-eyed babies, apple-cheeked young men in short-brimmed hats carrying their heritage in a sack. Strangers mingling, becoming lovers and companions. She never noticed that it all had changed.' Magnusson attempted an emphatic gesture, but the effect was of a palsied tremor. 'It's terrible! The petty alliances between people nowadays. Worse than loneliness. There's no trust, no commitment, no love. I'm so fortunate to have Laura.'

Laura beamed and clasped her hands at her waist, a pose both virtuous and triumphant. Magnusson studied the backs of his hands, as if considering their sad plight. Several of his fingers had been broken and left unset; the nail of his right thumb was missing, exposing a contused bulge of flesh. Jocundra was suddenly ashamed of her presence in the room.

'Perhaps it's just my damned Swedish morbidity,' said Magnusson out of the blue. 'I tried to kill myself once, you know. Slit my wrists. Damned fool youngster! I was discouraged by the rain and the state of the economy. Not much reason, you might think, for self-destruction, but I found it thoroughly oppressing at the time.'

'Well,' said Laura after an uncomfortable silence. 'We'll let you rest, Hilmer.' She laid her hand on the doorknob, but the old man spoke again.

'He'll find you out, Jocundra.'

'Sir?' She turned back to him.

'You operate on a paler principle than he, and he will find you out. But you're a healthy girl, even if a bit transparent. I can see it by your yellows and your blues.' He laughed, a hideous rasp which set him choking, and as he choked, he managed to say, 'Got your health, yes...' When he regained control, his tone was one of amusement. 'I wish I could offer medical advice. Stay off the fried foods, take cold showers, or some such. But as far as I can see, and that's farther than most, you're in the pink. Awful image! If you were in the pink, you'd be quite ill.'

'What in the world are you talkin' about, Hilmer?' Laura's voice held a note of frustration.

'Oh, no!' Magnusson's bony orbits seemed to be crumbling away under the green glow of his eyes, as if they were nuggets of a rare element implanted in his skull, ravaging him. 'You're not going to pick my brain anymore. An old man needs his secrets, his little edge on the world as it recedes.'

'Ezawa thinks he might be seein' bio-energy... auras.' Laura closed the door behind them and flexed the lacquered nails of her left hand as if they were blood-tipped claws. 'I'll get it out of him! He's becoming more and more aroused. If his body hadn't been so enervated to begin with, he'd already be chasin' me around the bed.'

Laura went down to the commissary to prepare Magnusson's lunch, and Jocundra, in no hurry to rejoin Donnell, wandered the hallway. Half of the rooms were untenanted,, all furnished with mahogany antiques and the walls covered with the same pattern of wallpaper: an infancy of rosebud cottages and grapevines. Cards were set into brass mounts on the doors of the occupied rooms, and she read them as she idled along. Clarice Monroe. That would be the black girl, the one who believed herself to be a dancer and had taught herself to walk after only a few weeks. Marilyn Ramsburgh, Kline Lee French, Jack Richmond. Beneath each name was a coded entry revealing the specifics of treatment and the prognosis. There were two green dots after Magnusson's name, signifying the new strain; his current prognosis was for three months plus or minus a week. That meant Donnell would have eight or nine months unless his youthfulness further retarded the bacterial action. A long time to spend with anyone, longer than her marriage. The Thirty Weeks War, or so Charlie had called it. She had